Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh’s cabinet has been expanded with the induction of fifty nine new ministers including 14 ministers of the Cabinet rank .
President Pratibha Devisingh Patil administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers at the majestic Ashoka Hall of Rashtrapati Bhawan at a simple but impressive function in New Delhi on Thursday.
With their induction, the total number of Council of Ministers including Dr Manmohan Singh has gone up to 79. There are in all 33 Cabinet Ministers , seven Ministers of State with independent charge and 38 Ministers of State.
Five time Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh and veteran Congress leader Mr. Veerbhadra Singh was the first to take oath, 28 year old Agatha Sangma, the youngest of the lot was the last to be sworn in. Twenty of the the ministers took oath in Hindi.
Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and 19 Cabinet ministers were sworn in on Friday last out of which six have already been allocated portfolios. There are 29 new faces in the Council of Ministers and 14 are first time MPs. Nine are women and an equal number are former Chief Ministers. 77 year old S.M. Krishna, the New External Affairs Minister, is the oldest minister in Dr Manmohan Singh’s team. There are 13 Rajya Sabha members in 79 member Council of Ministers including Dr manmohan Singh .
Former Chief Ministers Virbhadra Singh, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Dr. Farooq Abdullah are among those inducted into the Cabinet. In all, eight ministers have been promoted to Cabinet rank . Among them, B.K Handique and Anand Sharma were included in the first lot while G.K. Vasan, Subodh Kant Sahay, Dr. M.S. Gill, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Kanti Lal Bhuria and Kumari Selja in the second installment .
Other ministers who are being taken into the Cainet are Dayanidhi Maran, M.K. Azhagiri and A.Raja of the DMK, and Mallikarjun Kharge and Mukul Wasnik of Congress.
The seven ministers who have been given independent charge are Praful Patel, Prithviraj Chauhan, Sriprakash Jaiswal, Salman Khursheed, Dinsha Patel, Jairam Ramesh and Krishna Tirath.
Several young faces figure in the list of Ministers of State. They include Sachin Pilot, Jitin Prasad, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Shashi Tharoor.
Out of 78 ministers, 59 are Congress Ministers while the rest belong to its allies.
The Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari ,The Prime Ministers Dr. Manmohan Singh , the UPA Chairpersons Mrs Sonia Gandhi , several Cabinet Ministers who were sworn in earlier and Chief Ministers of Jammu and Kashmir , Rajasthan and Delhi and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.
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