Goa on Sunday got its first Cabinet minister since it achieved statehood in 1987 and the new Telangana state found representation in the Narendra Modi government while Uttar Pradesh and Bihar continued to dominate number-wise in the Union Council of Ministers.
A total of 21 new faces were inducted in today's Cabinet expansion out of which Uttar Pradesh, where BJP's stunning performance in Lok Sabha polls helped it come to power on its own, got maximum share with four Ministers followed by three representatives from Bihar. Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat got two ministers each in the expansion which took the total strength of the Council of Ministers to 66 from 45.
Four Cabinet Ministers, three Ministers of State with Independent Charge and 14 Ministers of State were inducted in the Council of Ministers today The other states which got representation in the expansion are Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Punjab. Former Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar became the first Cabinet minister from the tiny coastal state while Bandaru Dattatreya became the lone representative of the new state of Telangana.
With four new inductees, representation from Uttar Pradesh has gone up to 13 which include Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself who kept the Varanasi seat, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti and Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Kalraj Mishra. Noida MP Mahesh Sharma was included as Minister of State with Independent charge while rest three -- Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Ram Shankar Katheriya and Sadvi Niranjan Jyoti are Ministers of State. BJP had bagged 73 out of 80 seats in UP.
Bihar's representation with inclusion of three Ministers increased to eight, having the second highest representation in the Union Council of Ministers after UP. BJP-led NDA had won 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state where the saffron party aims to capture power in the assembly polls next year.
From Bihar, Rajiv Pratap Rudy was inducted as Minister of State with Independent Charge while Ram Kripal Yadav and Giriraj Singh were made Minister of State in the expansion. In May, three cabinet ministers, one Minister of State - Independent charge and one MoS were inducted from Bihar. Six Ministers were inducted in May from Maharashtra including Gopinath Munde, Nitin Gadkari, Anant Geete (Shiv Sena), Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goel and Rao Saheb Danve. Munde had died in a road accident here in June.
With induction of Suresh Prabhu and Hansraj Ahir, the representation from Maharashtra in the Union Cabinet has gone up to seven but its strength slipped to third. Representation from the Prime Minister's home state of Gujarat has gone up to five with induction of Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhury and Mohanbhai Kalyanjibhai Kundariya as Ministers of State. With no new faces, number of ministers from Madhya Pradesh remained at five while representation from Karnataka remained at four.
Representation from Rajasthan, where BJP had won all 25 seats in Lok Sabha, went up to three from one with inclusion of Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Sanwar Lal Jat. Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who was the lone representative from Punjab, will have a state colleague as Vijay Sampla was sworn in as MoS. Himachal Pradesh, which did not have any representative, has now got a Cabinet Minister with induction of J P Nadda. West Bengal also got a representative with inclusion of Babul Supriyo into the Ministry.
Number of representatives from Haryana increased to three with induction of Choudhury Birendra Singh as Cabinet Minister. The other two ministers from the state are Rao Inderjit Singh and Kishanpal.
MP from Jharkhand Jayant Sinha, son of BJP veteran and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, and Andhra MP Y S Chowdary were inducted as MoS. States which were left with no representation in the Cabinet include Kerala, Uttarakhand, Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim and Tripura.
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