Cabinet Expansion: 59 Ministers to Take Oath on Thursday
The first expansion of the cabinet, put off on Tuesday due to issues relating to berth sharing, will take place on Thursday with 14 cabinet ministers, including three former chief ministers and three DMK leaders, and 45 ministers of state being sworn-in.
According to reports, seven ministers of state will have independent charge.
The cabinet ministers include Virbhadra Singh, former Himachal Pradesh chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, former Maharashtra chief minister, and Farooq Abdullah, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister.
The others are Dayanidhi Maran, M K Azhagari and A. Raja of the DMK. From the Congress, the ministers will be Mallikarjun Kharge, Kumari Selja, Subodh Kant Sahay, M S Gill, G K Vasan, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Mukul Wasnik and Kantilal Bhuria.
The ministers with independent charge are Praful Patel of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress’ Prithviraj Chavan, Sriprakash Jaiswal, Salman Khurshid, Jairam Ramesh, Krishna Tirath and Dinsha Patel.
The other ministers of state are E Ahamed, V. Narayanasamy, Srikant Jena, Mullappally Ramachandran, D. Purandeswari, Panabaka Lakshmi, Ajay Maken, K.H. Muniyappa, Namo Narain Meena, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasad, A. Sai Prathap, Gurudas Kamat, M.M. Pallam Raju, Mahadev Khandela, Harish Rawat, KV Thomas, Saugata Ray, Dinesh Trivedi, Sisir Adhikari, Sultan Ahmed, Mukul Roy, Mohan Jatua, SS Palanimanickam, D Napoleon, S Jagathrakshakan, S Gandhiselvan, Preneet Kaur, Sachin Pilot, Shashi Tharoor, Bharatsinh Solanki, Tusharbhai Chaudhary, Arun Yadav, Prateek Prakashbapu Patil, RPN Singh, Vincent Pala, Pradeep Jain and Agatha Sangma.
As per the latest information, the strength of the cabinet has rose to 78. The detailed information did not come in at the time of filing this report.
