Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has made up his mind: he is going to expand his cabinet. The only question is when.Going by the time he took to announce his government in July, Deuba may need some more time so his patronage is distributed evenly among supporters. "You are looking at next week, or even after Dasain," one senior minister told us. "He does not decide fast."
But why now? The main catalyst is the move by Deuba's arch rival within his party, Girija Prasad Koirala, to fill key positions in the Nepali Congress Central Committee with cronies and loyalists.

There is no love lost between the two, and Deuba must have seen this as a personal challenge. Koirala himself needn't have done it so blatantly. What it shows is that Congress factions are still at each other's throats, which was the reason that despite being a majority party in parliament it has not been able to govern properly.

A close Deuba aide said a decision on cabinet expansion was imminent, and there could be as many as 39 ministers. Deuba has a reputation for jumbo cabinets-during his last tenure 1995-97 he had a record 48 ministers. To accommodate supporters, Deuba is even said to be thinking of unbundling larger ministries like Industry, Commerce and Supplies into smaller units. There are a lot of impatient Congressites Deuba needs to reward for helping him oust Koirala.

Koirala says he has given Deuba a free hand with ministerial appointments. "I don't care about what others say of my nominees in the central committee," he told reporters in Biratnagar on Tuesday. "And I won't comment on his pick of ministers in the cabinet. It's his prerogative as prime minister." What most independent political analysts hope is that the Congress infighting over portfolios and power will not erupt at a time when negotiations with Maoists have entered a crucial stage.

But there is also a more practical reason Deuba needs to expand his cabinet. Besides being prime minister, he manages nine ministries. Deuba may as well offload some key portfolios like Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Industry.