12 LS, 8 RS members in PM's team

The ministerial team sworn in alongwith prime minister Manmohan Singh here on Friday includes 12 members from the Lok Sabha, while the remaining eight are from the Rajya Sabha.

The prime minister leads the pack of members hailing from the House of Elders. The others in this bracket include Mr A K Antony, Mr S M Krishna, Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mr Vayalar Ravi, Mr Murli Deora, Ms Ambika Soni and Mr Anand Sharma.

The first installment of the Union Cabinet, interestingly, includes two members from Kerala, and both — Mr Antony and Mr Ravi — are members of the Rajya Sabha. In the just-concluded general election, Congress had posted a spectacular victory in the states, bagging 13 of the 20 Lok Sabha seats on its own.

The Cabinet team sworn in on Friday has five first-time entrants, including Mr S M Krishna (Karnataka), Mr Veerappa Moily (Karnataka), Mr B K Handique (Assam), Mr Anand Sharma (Himachal Pradesh) and Mr C P Joshi (Rajasthan). Mr Handique and Mr Sharma were ministers in the previous government, but they held the MoS rank.

The team has three women (Ms Mamata Banerjee, Ms Meira Kumar and Ambika Soni), and two Dalits (Sushil Kumar Shinde, besides Ms Kumar). Mr Antony and Mr Azad are the minority faces.

Friday’s exercise saw representation being given to states such as Maharashtra (3), Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Karnataka (2 each), Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan (one each).

States such as Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Haryana and Uttarakhand could not find any place in the team, and are likely to be given representation in the next round of expansion.

Source: Economictimes