Hemant Soren’s Cabinet is full, 11 take oath as ministers, few surprises

It had been expected earlier that Soren, who himself took oath a week ago, may keep some berths in the ministry vacant, which would have been useful bargaining chips for the future.

In the previous Jharkhand government, the JMM had seven ministers (including Soren), which has now gone up to eight, while the share of the Congress and RJD remains the same. In the new Assembly, the JMM has 34 MLAs, the Congress 16 and the RJD four.

According to the Jharkhand government, the first meeting of the new Cabinet will be held at 3 pm on Friday where portfolios would be assigned to the 12 ministers. Sources said while ministers from the JMM are likely to get key portfolios like Finance, Revenue, Mines and Industries, other departments like Power, Urban Development, Water and Transport may be distributed between allies Congress and RJD.

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and his Council of Ministers during the swearing-in ceremony at Raj Bhavan in Ranchi on Thursday. (PTI)

The ministers who were sworn-in include the JMM’s Deepak Birua (Chaibasa MLA), Chamra Linda (Bishunpur), Ramdas Soren (Ghatsila), Hafizul Hasan (Madhupur), Yogendra Prasad (Gomia) and Sudivya Kumar (Giridih); the Congress’s Radha Krishna Kishore (Chhatarpur), Irfan Ansari (Jamtara), Deepika Pandey Singh (Mahagama) and Shilpi Neha Tirkey (Mandar), and the RJD’s Sanjay Prasad Yadav (Godda).

Ramdas Soren, Dipak Birua, Hafizul Hasan, Dipika Pandey Singh and Irfan Ansari have been repeated from the previous government.

Ramdas Soren had replaced former JMM No. 2 Champai Soren in the previous Soren ministry after the latter switched to the BJP. Both Ramdas and Birua, another repeat minister, belong to the crucial Kolhan division that the BJP has been trying to wrest from the JMM.

The retention of Ansari is also significant as, during the election campaign, senior BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma had attacked him – along with former minister Alamgir Alam – calling on the people of the state to remove the two from power like “we removed Babur from Ayodhya”. Hasan, who has also been retained, after he won by more than 20,000 votes, had also faced taunts from Sarma.

Dipika Pandey, the fifth minister retained, is the first woman minister from the Santhal Pargana region and the daughter-in-law of former Bihar minister Awadh Bihari Singh.

The new Council of Ministry provides representation to all the five administrative divisions of the state. The MLAs from the tribal-dominated Santhal Pargana, which dominate the Council of Ministry, include Hemant Soren himself (he is the Barhait MLA), besides Hafizul Hasan, Irfan Ansari, Sanjay Prasad Yadav and Dipika Pandey Singh.

The Kolhan division ministers are Deepak Birua and Ramdas Soren. South Chotanagpur’s representatives are Chamra Linda and Shilpi Neha Tirkey, while Sudivya Kumar and Yogendra Prasad are the North Chotanagpur faces.