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New Delhi:
The Union Council of Ministers was expanded on Thursday with the
induction of 59 ministers including three former chief ministers
Vilasrao Deshmukh, Farooq Abdullah and Virbhadra Singh at the
Cabinet level.
In
all, 14 cabinet ministers, including DMK nominees M K Alagiri,
Dayanidhi Maran and A Raja, and Congress' Mallikarjun Kharge were
sworn in by President Pratibha Patil, six days after Prime Minister
and 19 others took oath in the first instalment.
Seven Ministers of State with Independent Charge, including Praful
Patel of NCP, Prithviraj Chavan, Salman Khursheed and Jairam Ramesh
and 38 Ministers of State were also sworn in at a ceremony in the
Rashtrapati Bhawan attended among others by Vice President Hamid
Ansari, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia
Gandhi.
With Thursday's induction, the strength of the Union Council of
Ministers goes up to 79, including the Prime Minister, the same as
the previous UPA government after the exit of Shivraj Patil.
M
S Gill, Selja, Subodhkant Sahay, G K Vasan, Pawan Kumar Bansal,
Kantilal Bhuria were the other cabinet ministers inducted today, all
from Congress who have been elevated from the status of Ministers of
State. Mukul Wasnik, an MoS in the P V Narasimha Rao government, has
been brought in as a Cabinet Minister.
Sriprakash Jaiswal and Dinsha Patel have been elevated as Ministers
of State with Independent Charge while Delhi MP Krishna Tirath makes
her ministerial debut in the same category.
Prominent among the new ministers who were sworn in were Shashi
Tharoor, a former UN diplomat who won from Thiruvananthapuram,
Sachin Pilot and Praneet Kaur, wife of former Punjab Chief Minister
Amarinder Singh, and Agatha Sangma, daughter of former Lok Sabha
Speaker P A Sangma.
The expansion also saw induction of six Trinamool Congress MPs, four
from DMK and one from Muslim League.
Of
the 14 new Cabinet ministers, Kharge, a senior leader from
Karnataka, Selja and Wasnik belong to Scheduled Caste while Bhuria
belongs to Scheduled Tribe. Tirath also belongs to Scheduled Caste.
Deshmukh, who belongs to dominant Maratha caste, had to quit as
Chief Minister in the aftermath of terror attack in Mumbai in
November last year.
The other Ministers of State who would be sworn in are E Ahamed
(Muslim League), V Narayanasamy, Namo Narain Meena, Srikant Jena,
Mullapally Ramachandran, A Sai Prathap, Harish Rawat, D Purandeswari,
Panabaka Lakshmi, Ajay Maken, Gurudas Kamat, K H Muniyappa,
Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada, M M Pallam Raju, Mahadev
Khandela, and K V Thomas (all Congress).
Other Congress leaders to make it to the Council of Ministers were
Bharatsinh Solanki, Tusharbhai Chaudhary, Arun Yadav, Prateek
Prakashbapu Patil, R P N Singh, Vincent Pala and Pradeep Jain.
The TMC members Saugata Ray, Dinesh Trivedi, Sisir Adhikari, Sultan
Ahmed, Mukul Roy and Mohan Jatua also took oath.
Ministers of State from DMK were S S Palanimackam, who retains his
place, actor D Napolean, S Jagathrakshakan and S Gandhiselvan.
Of
the 59, 42 belong to Congress, taking the total number of ministers
from the party to 60, including the Prime Minister.
The new ministers inducted on Thursday include seven of DMK, six of
TMC, two of NCP and one each of National Conference and Muslim
League.
Out of 42 from Congress, 10 are Cabinet ministers, six with
Independent charge and 26 Ministers of State. In all, Congress has
28 Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime Minister.
Surprisingly, there is no representative in the Cabinet from Uttar
Pradesh where Congress saw a substantial revival in the Lok Sabha
Elections.
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