BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh Council of Ministers was expanded on Wednesday with the induction of six Ministers. Two of them, Himmat Kothari and Kusum Mehdle, have Cabinet rank while Narottam Mishra, Kamal Patel, Parasmal Jain and Ajay Bishnoi have been designated Ministers of State.

The new Ministers were administered the oath of office and secrecy by the Governor, Balram Jakhar, at Raj Bhavan here.

After the swearing-in ceremony, Chief Minister Babulal Gaur told newspersons that three Ministers — Harnam Sing Rathore, Dilip Bhatere and Shivnarayan Jagirdar — had been dropped.

With these changes the strength of the Council of Ministers has gone up to 35.

While Mr. Rathore and Mr. Bhatere were Cabinet Ministers, Mr. Jagirdar was Minister of State. Mr. Gaur told journalists that their resignations had been forwarded to the Governor. Speculation that Archana Chitnis would be removed from the Ministry proved incorrect as the Chief Minister returned her resignation papers.

The Chief Minister also reshuffled the portfolios of many Ministers while allocating portfolios to the new Ministers.

Mr. Gaur has retained for himself the portfolios of General Administration, Home, Public Relations, Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA), Information Technology, Bio-Diversity and Bio-Technology.

Portfolios

The portfolios allocated to the other ministers are Mr. Kothari (Forest), Kusum Mehdle (Revenue, Women and Child Development), Gauri Shankar Shejwar (School Education and Social Justice), Kailash Chawla (Commercial Tax, Commerce and Industry, Employment and Public Sector Undertakings), Raghavji (Finance, Planning, Economics and Statistics and 20-Point Implementation), Dhal Singh Bisen (Jail), Gopal Bhargava (Agriculture), Kailash Vijayvargiya (Public Works department), Chaudhary Chandrabhan Singh (Food and Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection), Narendra Singh Tomar (Panchayat, Rural Development and Village Industries), Om Prakash Dhurve (Sports and Youth Welfare), Anup Mishra (Water Resources), Jayant Kumar Malaiya (Urban Administration and Development and Tourism), Kunvar Vijay Shah (Scheduled Tribes Welfare), Rustam Singh (Public Health and Family Welfare), and Ms. Archana Chitnis (Animal Husbandry and Gau Sanvardhan Board).

Ministers of State

The portfolios allocated to the Ministers of State with independent charge are Rajendra Shukla (Housing and Environment), Laxmikant Sharma (Mining, Public Grievances, Culture, Religious Trusts and Endowments,

Rehabilitation, Science and Technology), Badrilal Yadav (Fisheries, Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare), Umashankar Gupta (Transport, Higher Education, Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation), Narottam Mishra (Law and Parliamentary Affairs), Kamal Patel (Medical Education, Technical Education and Training), Rampal Singh (Public Health Engineering), and Luvkesh Singh (Labour).

The portfolios of the other Ministers of State are Moti Kashyap (Revenue), Meena Singh (Women and Child Development), Gangaram Patel (GAD), Gopilal Jatav (Scheduled Castes Welfare), Jagdeesh Dewda (Home and School Education), Karan Singh Verma (Panchayat and Rural Development), Narayan Singh Kushwaha (Social Justice, Animal Husbandry and Gau Sanvardhan), Antar Singh Arya (Scheduled Tribes Welfare), Parasmal Jain (Forest), and Ajay Bishnoi (PWD and NVDA).

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