Abdullah, Kharge, Deshmukh in Union Cabinet

K H Muniyappa made MoS; 59 new ministers to be sworn in today

The new Cabinet ministers are: former chief ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh, Farooq Abdullah and Virbhadra Singh, DMK’s Dayanidhi Maran, M K Azhagiri and A Raja, besides Congress’ Mallikarjun Kharge, Kumari Selja, Subodh Kant Sahay, M S Gill, G K Vasan, P K Bansal, Mukul Wasnik and Kantilal Bhuria.

The ministers who will be vested with independent charge are Praful Patel of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress’ Prithviraj Chavan, Sriprakash Jaiswal, Salman Khursheed, Jairam Ramesh, Krishna Tirath and Dinsha Patel.

New faces

The swearing-in ceremony will take place at Rashtrapati Bhavan at 11:30 am on Thursday. Besides these, prominent among the new lot who will be sworn in as MoS include: Shashi Tharoor, a former Under Secretary General at the United Nations, Sachin Pilot and Praneet Kaur, wife of former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh, and Agatha Sangma, daughter of former Lok Sabha Speaker and NCP leader P A Sangma.

Amongst others, Jyotiraditya Scindia comes back to the government. Agatha will also be the youngest minister in the Council of Ministers. Young faces from various states crowd the caterogy of junior ministers in the UPA government.

While Deshmukh, Abdullah, Azhagiri and Kharge make their debut as Union ministers, Bansal, Wasnik, Gill, Selja, Vasan, Bhuria and Sahay have been elevated to Cabinet rank. Only Wasnik was not a member in the last UPA government.

The ministry-formation exercise was completed on Wednesday afternoon after three days of intense discussions between Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

The PM seemed to be in a hurry to complete the exercise as the list of ministers was not only sent to the President for approval but also issued as a press release. This was perhaps done in the backdrop of criticism in the media that there was an inordinate delay in finalising the names of the ministers although the election results were announced on May 16.

Still, there was no information on the allocation of portfolios for the 13 senior ministers who took oath on May 22, although six of those who were sworn in along with them have been entrusted ministerial responsibilities.

From the last UPA government, the prime minister has dropped five Cabinet ministers –Arjun Singh, T R Baalu, H R Bharadwaj, Sisram Ola and Saifuddin Soz.

Tamil Nadu will get the maximum representation in the new Council of Ministers -- 10 — followed by Maharashtra 9, West Bengal 8, Kerala 6 and Uttar Pradesh 5.

Surprisingly, there is no Cabinet rank minister from UP although the Congress put up its best performance in 2009 compared to the last two decades. Also, Andhra Pradesh, which returned 33 Congress MPs, got only one Cabinet post. Himachal Pradesh, which sends three MPs to LS, has got two Cabinet berths while both MPs from Meghalaya will become ministers. The number of Muslim ministers will come down from six to five now.

In all, the Congress will have 28 Cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister. The average age of the Cabinet ministers is 66 while that of the MoS team is 45. A total of 19 –seven each from the DMK and the Trinamool Congress, three from NCP and one each from the National Conference and Muslim League – make up the list of allies in the government. As for women, whose number in the LS at 59 is the highest ever,  nine of them will be drafted into the government.

Team Manmohan

Cabinet Ministers

1. Virbhadra Singh 
2. Vilasrao Deshmukh
3. Farooq Abdullah
4. Dayanidhi Maran
5. A Raja
6. Mallikarjun Kharge
7. Kumari Selja
8. Subodh Kant Sahay
9. M S Gill
10.G K Vasan
11. Pawan Kumar Bansal
12. Mukul Wasnik
13. Kantilal Bhuria
14. M K Azhagiri

Ministers of State with Independent Charge
1. Praful Patel
2. Prithviraj Chavan
3. Sriprakash Jaiswal
4. Salman Khursheed
5. Dinsha Patel
6. Jairam Ramesh
7. Krishna Tirath

Ministers of State
E Ahamed
V Narayanasamy
Srikant Jena
Mullappally Ramachandran
D Purandeswari
Panabaka Lakshmi
Ajay Maken
K H Muniyappa
Namo Narain Meena
Jyotiraditya Scindia
Jitin Prasada
A Sai Prathap
Gurudas Kamat
M M Pallam Raju
Mahadev Khandela
Harish Rawat
K V Thomas
Saugata Ray
Dinesh Trivedi
Shishir Adhikari
Sultan Ahmed
Mukul Roy
Mohan
Jatua
S S Palanimanickam
D Napoleon
S Jagathrakshakan
S Gandhiselvan
Preneet Kaur
Sachin Pilot
Shashi Tharoor
Bharatsinh Solanki
Tusharbhai Chaudhary
Arun Yadav
Prateek Prakash Patil
R P N Singh
Vincent Pala
Pradeep Jain
Agatha Sangma