Federal Cabinet has now reached with 77 members after adding up 1 more. Unfortunately, large size of cabinets are downside to parliamentary democracies, especially with coalition governments.
While, the absolute disregard for the limit of legal on cabinet size, consisting with high cost to the national exchequer of each minister or equivalent position’s salary and perks, is astounding.
Under the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, the cabinet size is bonded to 11% of the total members of both houses of Parliament, around 49 respectively.
Whereas, the large sized cabinet is problematic no one of the major political parties have the moral authority to criticise it, as every major party has breached the rules of both provincial and federal.
Sticking to the federation, in the past 20 years the PML-Q, PPP, PML-N and PTI governments have all exceeded the 50 cabinet-member mark at different times, often for various months and years.
The last record holder was Yousaf Raza Gilani with 66 members which was also resulted of a large coalition. While, former PM Imran Khan’s cabinet exceeded with 50 members for various months before his ruling ended.
