Oommen Chandy cautions against outside-agenda items

Thiruvananthapuram: The Cabinet has sounded an abundant note of caution against Ministers trooping in with outside agenda (OA) items seeking the Council of Ministers’ urgent approval for their proposals.

There has been a spate of such OA items before the Cabinet, prompting Chief Minister Oommen Chandy to issue a directive after the last Cabinet meeting on January 22.

“The council has resolved that a Minister shall bring an outside agenda item, of an urgent nature, for the consideration of the Council only with permission of the Chief Minister and also with the approval of the Finance Minister if the proposal has financial implications”, the secret note says.

The procedure for placing a matter before the Cabinet mandates that the administrative department gets the proposal vetted by other departments concerned and cleared by the CM.

The facing sheet of the Cabinet note bears all relevant details.

It’s not clear what prompted Chandy to issue the note but his own experiences as the Finance Minister in the Karunakaran Ministry way back in 1992 is a telling case.

Chandy had signed on a file, containing the proposal to import palmolein, which Food Minister T. H. Musthaffa brought in as an OA item.

Chandy had only given his nod to place to the file before the Cabinet though as Finance Minister he had not examined the merits of the proposal.

But even after more than two decades the debate has not died down.