Himachal Pradesh cabinet expansion: Seven ministers take oath

The fourweek old Himachal Pradesh cabinet headed by Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu was expanded on Sunday with the induction of seven ministers including Vikramaditya Singh the son of former chief minister Virbhadra SinghWith the induction of seven members the strength of the cabinet rose to nineGovernor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar administered oath to the newly inducted ministers in a simple ceremony at the Raj BhawanShimla district with seven MLAs has been given a lions share in the cabinet with three ministers and one Chief Parliamentary Secretary CPS while Bilaspur Mandi and Lahaul and Spiti failed to get any representationBesides the post of deputy speaker three berths are still vacant as maximum number of ministers including the chief minister cannot exceed 12The newly added ministers included eldest MLA Dhani Ram Shandil former minister and threetime MLA from Solan Chander Kumar former minister and sixtime MLA from Jawali in Kangra district Harshwardhan Chauhan sixtime MLA from Shillai in Sirmaur district and Jagat Singh Negi former deputy speaker and fivetime MLA from tribal Kinnaur districtAlso Read Himachal Police training force in Tibetan Chinese language to bolster intelligence networkFourtime MLA Rohit Thakur threetime MLA Anirudh Singh and twotime MLA Vikramaditya Singh from JubbalKotkhai Kasumpti and Shimla Rural respectively were also among those inductedChief Minister Sukhu and Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri were sworn in on December 11 and the expansion of cabinet was delayed by 28 daysThe Council of ministers comprises five Rajputs one Brahmin and one member each from Schedule Tribe Scheduled Caste and OBC categoriesAhead of the cabinet expansion Chief Minister Sukhu appointed six CPS and administered them oath of office and secrecy at a simple ceremonyThe CPS included Sunder Singh Thakur from Kullu Mohan Lal Bragta from Rohroo in Shimla district Ram Kumar Chowdhary from Doon in Solan district Ashish Butail from Palampur and Kishori Lal from Baijnath in Kangra district and Sanjay Awasthi from Arki in Solan districtTwo mirrors of the Darbar Hall the venue of the oath taking ceremony which was packed to capacity broke as supporters of MLAs tried to barge inThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever