Dehradun, Mar 20 (PTI) With Assembly elections scheduled in Uttarakhand next year, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Friday carried out the much-awaited expansion of his cabinet, inducting five new ministers, including former state BJP president Madan Kaushik.
Besides Kaushik, the other MLAs who were inducted into the state cabinet include Khajan Das, Bharat Singh Chaudhary, Pradeep Batra and Ram Singh Kaida.
With the induction of the new ministers, the strength of the state cabinet has increased to 12, which is the maximum as per the constitutional provision.
Governor Lieutenant General Gurmit Singh (Retd.) administered the oath of office and secrecy to the ministers at a ceremony held at Lok Bhavan here. Chaudhary took the oath in Sanskrit.
The chief minister, his cabinet colleagues, and other dignitaries were present at the ceremony.
Khajan Das is the MLA from Rajpur Road in Dehradun while Chaudhary is the MLA from Rudraprayag, Kaushik from Haridwar, Batra from Roorkee and Kaida from Bhimtal.
Chaudhary, Batra and Kaida have got the opportunity to hold ministerial posts for the first time, whereas Das and Kaushik have held this responsibility earlier also.
The cabinet expansion seeks to balance the Garhwal and Kumaon regions as well as provide representation to the plains and hilly areas, which is considered crucial ahead of the state assembly elections scheduled early next year.
Five posts were vacant in the Dhami cabinet for a long time which were waiting to be filled.
When the BJP came to power for the second consecutive time in 2022, a total of nine ministers, including Chief Minister Dhami, were sworn in.
The cabinet was reduced to eight members after the death of Social Welfare and Transport Minister Chandan Ramdas in April 2023, while the number had come down to seven last year after the resignation of Prem Chand Agarwal, who was in charge of Parliamentary Affairs and Finance portfolios, following a controversy.
During the last four years of the state government’s tenure, discussions about cabinet expansion intensified several times but this exercise never reached fruition before.
Dhami congratulated the new ministers and said that his entire team would work together for the development of the state and public service.
“Our goal is to ensure that the last person in the state benefits from development and has the opportunity to progress. We will all work together with a team spirit, dedicated to serving the people of the state,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Congress termed the cabinet expansion as an attempt to suppress the internal strife within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and claimed that despite this, there would be infighting within the ruling party before the elections.
Uttarakhand Congress president Ganesh Godiyal said that in the cabinet expansion, instead of giving respect to its workers and senior MLAs, the BJP has given more importance to the MLAs who defected from the Congress and has made people with Congress background ministers.
He said, “The state cabinet expansion has been done to quell the internal strife within the BJP. But despite this, there will still be infighting within the BJP before the elections.” Of the five MLAs inducted into the cabinet, three — Batra, Chaudhary and Kaida — had left the Congress and joined the BJP. PTI DPT NB
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