'PM can now convene a Cabinet meet abroad!'

Image: PM Singh arrives at the JFK airport in New York on Thursday wife Gursharan Kaur and ambassadors Nirupama Rao and Hardeep Puri
Photographs: Jay Mandal/On Assignment A Correspondent in New Delhi

At least a dozen Union ministers, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, are abroad and some more are slated to be off to attend international conferences in the coming days.

To be honest, each one of them is abroad on business, and not for pleasure.

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A dozen ministers abroad, including 7 in US

Image: Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee visiting an exhibition to commemoration of 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, in New York.
Photographs: Jay Mandal/On Assignment

A joke doing the rounds in the capital is that the PM, who is now in New York, can very well convene an emergency meeting of the Union Cabinet abroad to discuss the crisis at home created by the letter-bomb hitting Home Minister P Chidambaram.

He won't have any problem of the quorum. There are already seven ministers in the United States and the quorum requires a minimum of six.

Sharma, Shinde and Abdullah by Pranab's side

Image: Commerce Minister Anand Sharma with the US Trade Representative Ron Kirk in Washington
Photographs: PIB

While Foreign Minister S M Krishna is with him in New York to hold bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session, Mukherjee, who is in Washington, DC to address the India investment forum, has three other ministers by his side: Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and Renewable Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah.

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is also in the US attending the UN meeting on non-communicable diseases. On Tuesday, he attended a round-table of the health ministers of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations.

Tourism Minister Sahay on trip to CIS countries

Image: Tourism Minister Subodh Kant Sahay

Tourism Minister Subodh Kant Sahay went off to a three-nation tour of the Commonwealth of Independent States on Wednesday, the day PM and Mukherjee took off separately for the US.

CIS consists mostly of the nations that were part of the erstwhile Soviet Union, like Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, etc.

Sibal in Finland; Jyotiraditya in Zimbabwe

Image: Union minister Kapil Sibal

While Anand Sharma is busy attending the US-India economic opportunities and synergy summit, his junior Jyotiraditya Scindia is off to Zimbabwe to promote investment and trade links.

Human Resources Development and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal went off to Finland to address a summit on information and network security and then landed in Estonia to sign a couple of agreements.

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