Manmohan's Team

May 28, 2009 T

Manmohan govt strength goes to 79

At a glittering ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President administered oath of office and secrecy to 14 Cabinet ministers, seven Ministers of State with Independent charge and 38 Ministers of State. As Prime minister Manmohan Singh and 19 cabinet ministers had taken oath on May 22, with today's expansion, the strength of council of ministers has reached to 79, including 33 Ministers of Cabinet rank.


NEW DELHI: The seven-day old UPA Council of Ministers was extended today with President Pratibha Devisingh Patil administering oath to 59 ministers increasing its total strength to 79.

At a glittering ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President administered oath of office and secrecy to 14 Cabinet ministers, seven Ministers of State with Independent charge and 38 Ministers of State. As Prime minister Manmohan Singh and 19 cabinet ministers had taken oath on May 22, with today's expansion, the strength of council of ministers has reached to 79, including 33 Ministers of Cabinet rank.

The 59 ministers who were sworn in included 43 from the Congress, seven from the DMK, seven from the Trinamool Congress, two from the NCP and one from the National Conference. The Congress has kept the lion's share of 60 of the 79 ministers, including 28 Cabinet, 6 Ministers of State with Independent charge and 26 MoS positions.

The expanded Council of Ministers now has nine former Chief Ministers Virbhadra Singh (Himachal Pradesh), Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sharad Pawar and Sushil Kumar Shinde (Maharashtra), Dr Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad(Jammu and Kashmir) and S M Krishna and Veerappa Moily (Karnataka) and A K Antony (Kerala).

The new ministry has three DMK nominees of the cabinet rank -- DMK supremo M Karunanidhi's son M K Azhagiri, grand newphew Dayanidhi Maran and his trusted aide A Raja. Mr Raja was a Cabinet Minister in the outgoing ministry while Mr Maran was also a minister in the first UPA government for about three years.

AICC General Secretary Mukul Wasnik and Senior Congress leader from Karnataka Mallikarjun Kharge have also been included in the Cabinet.

Kumari Selja, Pawan Kumar Bansal, G K Vasan, Kantilal Bhuria, Dr M S Gill and Subodh Kant Sahay, who were all Ministers of State in the first UPA government, have been elevated to the Cabinet rank.

NCP nominee Praful Patel will continue to be Minister of State with Independent charge. Senior Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh Salman Khurshid has been inducted as the Minister of State with Independent charge.

Prithviraj Chauhan, Sriprakash Jaiswal, Dinsha Patel and Jairam Ramesh, who were all Ministers of State in the first UPA government, have been elevated to MoS Independent charge. Ms Krishna Tirath, one of the seven MPs from Delhi, has been made a Minister of State with Independent charge.

Of the 38 Ministers of State sworn in, eleven were Ministers in the first UPA government. They are : E Ahamed, V Narayanaswamy, D Purandareswari, Panabaka Lakshmi, Ajay Maken, K H Muniyappa, Namo Narain Meena, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasad, M M Pallam Raju and S S Palanimanickam.

Former UN Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor, daughter of former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma, Agatha Sangma and Congress leader Sachin Pilot have been inducted as young faces of the government.

The other Ministers of State who have been sworn in are Srikant Jena, Mullappally Ramachandran, A Sai Prathap, Gurudas Kamat, Mahadev Khandela, Harish Rawat, Prof K V Thomas, Saugata Ray, Dinesh Trivedi, Sisir Adhikari, Sultan Ahmed, Mukul Roy, Mohan Jatua, D Napoleon, Dr S Jagathrakshakan, S Gandhiselvan, Preneet Kaur, Bharatsinh Solanki, Tusharbhai Chaudhary, Arun Yadav, Prateek Prakashbapu Patil, R P N Singh, Vincent Pala and Pradeep Jain.

The Constitution allows a maximum of 79 ministers working out to ten per cent of the combined strength of 793 Members of Parliament including 543 of the Lok Sabha and 250 of Rajya Sabha.

The new ministry gives representation to 20 of the 28 states and three of the seven Union Territories of the Indian Union. Coalition compulsions obviously took up the number of representations in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra to nine each followed by West Bengal which gets eight ministers including seven of Trinamool Congress of Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Bihar, which sent only two Congress MPs to the Lok Sabha, has got lone representation in Meira Kumar as the Congress has ignored claims of RJD President Lalu Prasad spurning his unconditional support of four MPs in the Lower House.

Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have been accorded six ministerial berths each, followed by Uttar Pradesh which gets five, while Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka get four each.

Gujarat and Punjab have three ministers each in Dr Singh's government, followed by two each from Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Meghalaya.

Jharkhand, Orissa, Haryana and Uttarakhand are represented by one minister each.

Among the three Union Territories which have come on board the new government, Delhi gets the lion's share of three ministerial berths while Chandigarh and Puducherry have been rewarded with one berth each.

The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah has been rewarded with a Cabinet berth, while Mr E Ahmed of Indian Union muslim League (IUML) has been retained as a Minister of State. The cabinet has retained 12 old faces, including Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram and A K Antony, and elevated six but dropped several big guns like Arjun Singh, H R Bhardwaj and Saifudin Soz, all from Congress. Former Surface Transport Minster T R Baalu of DMK has also been dropped, while his party colleague Dayanidhi Maran stages a comeback.

Other prominent leaders who could not make it to the Council of Ministers were Sisram Ola, Oscar Fernandes and Ashwani Kumar, who held portfolios of Mines, Labour and Industry respectively in the previous government.

Prominent among those elevated to the Cabinet rank are Anand Sharma, Bijoy Kumar Handique, Subodh Kant Sahay, Manohar Singh Gill, Pawan Kumar Bansal and Kantilal Bhuria.

Mani Shankar Aiyar, Renuka Choudhary, Santosh Mohan Dev, Shankarsinh Vaghela, A R Antulay, all ministers in Dr Singh's last government, could not make it to his new government as all of them were defeated in the elections.