NEW DELHI – The day half the country went through the second day of power grid collapse – the worst in the world so far – power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde received his good performance award: the home ministry.
P Chidambaram returned to the finance ministry after a three-and-a-half-year stint in the home ministry, following former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s elevation to Raisina Hill.
The reshuffle also saw corporate affairs minister M Veerappa Moily getting the power portfolio as an additional charge.
After a quick assessment of the second grid collapse hitting 20 states and about 600 million, Moily said the collapse of the three grids was a “very difficult and challenging situation”.
Tuesday’s blackout came less than 36 hours after a similar outage in the northern grid.
The move to put Chidambaram at the helm of the finance ministry is believed to be initiated at the top as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who held finance after Mukherjee’s resignation on June 26, wanted to have a full-time finance minister to take questions in the monsoon session of Parliament beginning on August 8.
