The idea of such ministerial panels first cropped up and was implemented during the regime of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. More were added under then prime minister Manmohan Singh's United Progressive (UPA) Alliance government.
Since neither the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nor the Congress had the numbers to form governments of their own and relied on their allies, these ministerial groups were to let coalition leaders deliberate key matters before bringing them to the cabinet.
Pranab Mukherjee, now India's president, P. Chidambaram and A.K. Antony of the Congress party and Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led the maximum of these ministerial groups -- that at one point had swelled to as many as 60.
The EGOMs, in particular, were even bestowed with the authority to take decisions and a subsequent discussion and approval by any cabinet committee, presided over by the prime minister, was a mere formality.
The subjects of the EGOMs included effective management of drought, pricing of natural gas and ultra mega power projects, while those of the GOMs included strategy for water management, national war memorial and administrative reforms.
