Arun Chaudhary is a Dalit face from Gurdaspur district while Razia Sultana is a prominent leader from Malerkotla, who belongs to the Muslim community.

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While Amarinder Singh and Rana Gurjit Singh were the only ones to take oath in English, Mohindra and Aruna Chaudhary took oath in Hindi, while the rest took the oath in Punjabi.

The state can have a maximum of 18 ministers including the Chief Minister. The Congress has 77 MLAs in the assembly.

Amarinder Singh initially has kept the strength of his Cabinet short, leaving scope to go for in an expansion at a later stage.

Capt Amarinder had announced that the oath taking ceremony would be a simple affair in view of the financial crisis facing the stage.

A galaxy of Congress leaders including Himachal Pradesh CM Virbhadra Singh, Kapil Sibal, Ashok Gehlot, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Ajay Maken, Raj Babbar, Ambika Soni, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Anand Sharma, Natwar Singh, Sachin Pilot and Asha Kumari, Pratap Singh Bajwa, among others were present on the occasion.

Amarinder's wife former Union Minister Preneet Kaur and his family members were also present. Also present on the occasion included Pakistani journalist Aroosa Alam.

Former UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav was represented by his ex-Minister Balwant Singh Ramoowalia. Families of other Ministers, who took oath, were also present on the occasion.

After taking oath, Navjot Sidhu, the MLA from Amritsar-East met Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi.

Congress under the leadership of Amarinder had won 77 seats in the 117 member Assembly elections wresting power from the SAD-BJP alliance which was relegated to the third spot with 18 seats.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won 20 seats and two seats went to its ally Lok Insaaf Party.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)