Filling his entire cabinet at once, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Thursday inducted 11 MLAs. Among them, six are from JMM and four and one are from Indian partners Congress and RJD respectively.
Like the previous government, there are two women members in the Council of Ministers. Both are Congress MLAs. Five of the 11 who took oath on Thursday were retained from the previous government of India headed by Soren.
It was already expected that Soren, who himself was sworn in a week ago, could keep some berths in the ministry vacant, which would be useful bargaining chips for the future.
In the previous Jharkhand government, the JMM had seven ministers (including Soren), which has now increased to eight, while the Congress and RJD have the same share. In the new assembly, JMM has 34 MLAs, Congress 16 and RJD four.
The ministers – whose portfolios are yet to be decided – include JMM’s Deepak Birua (Chaibasa MLA), Chamra Linda (Bishunpur), Ramdas Soren (Ghatsila), Hafizul Hasan (Madhupur), Yogendra Prasad (Gomia) and Sudivya Kumar (Giridih). . ; Congress’s Radhakrishna Kishore (Chhatarpur), Irfan Ansari (Jamatara), Deepika Pandey Singh (Mahagama) and Shilpi Neha Tirki (Mandar), and RJD’s Sanjay Prasad Yadav (Godda).
Ramdas Soren, Deepak Plant, Hafizul Hasan, Deepika Pandey Singh and Irfan Ansari are repeats from the previous government.
Ramdas Soren replaced former JMM No. 2 Champai Soren as the previous Soren minister. Both Ramdas and Plant, another repeat minister, belong to the important Kolhan division which the BJP is trying to wrest from the JMM.
Ansari’s retention is also significant as senior BJP leader Himant Biswa Sharma, along with former minister Alamgir Alam, attacked him during the election campaign – calling on the people of the state to remove the two from power, as in “We removed Babar. Ayodhya”. Hassan, who was retained after winning by more than 20,000 votes, also faced Sarma’s criticism.
Deepika Pandey is the fifth minister, first woman minister of Santhal Pargana region and daughter-in-law of former Bihar minister Awadh Bihari Singh.
The new cabinet has given representation to all the five administrative bodies of the state. MLAs from the tribal-majority Santhal Pargana, which is dominated by the Council of Ministers, besides Hemant Soren himself (he is a Barhait MLA), Hafizul Hasan, Irfan Ansari, Sanjay Prasad Yadav and Deepika Pandey Singh.
The Ministers of Kolhan Division are Deepak Plant and Ramdas Soren. South Chotanagpur is represented by Chamra Linda and Shilpi Neha Tirki, while North Chotanagpur is represented by Sudivya Kumar and Yogendra Prasad.
Radhakrishna Kishore is the MLA elected from Palamu in the ministry.