Jharkhand Cabinet expansion: 11 MLAs from JMM, Cong, RJD become ministers

Eleven MLAs, including six from JMM, were sworn in as ministers in the Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand on Thursday.

Governor Santosh Kumar Gangwar administered the oath to the ministers at Ashok Udyan of the Raj Bhavan here.

The six JMM legislators, who took oath as ministers, are Sudivya Kumar, Deepak Birua, Ramdas Soren, Chamra Linda, Yogendra Prasad and Hafijul Hasan.

Congress MLAs Deepika Pandey Singh, Shilpi Neha Tirkey, Irfan Ansari and Radhakrishna Kishore were sworn in as ministers, while RJD's Sanjay Prasad Yadav also found a berth.

JMM leader Hemant Soren took oath as the chief minister on November 28.

Six new faces have been inducted into the Hemant Soren government, while Deepika Pandey Singh, Irfan Ansari, Deepak Birua and Ramdas Soren have got ministerial positions for the second time and Hafizul Hasan for the third.

The swearing-in ceremony began with Stephen Marandi taking oath as the pro-tem speaker of the assembly.

Marandi, a senior JMM MLA, was appointed as pro-tem Speaker of the assembly after Hemant Soren took oath as the chief minister last week.

The JMM-led alliance, last month, stormed to power in Jharkhand for the second time in a row, securing 56 seats in the 81-member assembly, while the BJP-headed NDA managed 24.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which emerged as a surprise element in the Jharkhand assembly elections with its candidates winning in four of the six seats where the party contested, got one ministerial berth.

In 2019, the RJD managed to win only the Chatra seat where Satyanand Bhokta had won.

The JMM got a total of seven berths, including CM Soren, in the 12-member cabinet.

The JMM contested 43 seats and won 34, the highest-ever constituencies bagged by the party in assembly polls.

Congress got four ministerial berths. The party had won 16 seats in the assembly elections, while CPI(ML) Liberation, which secured two seats as an ally of the INDIA bloc, earlier announced that it would not be a part of the cabinet.

The BJP contested 68 seats, won 21 and emerged as the second-largest party in the assembly.

After Soren took oath last Saturday, it was also decided that an assembly session would be held from December 9-12.