New Delhi: Four weeks after Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu took oath as the chief minister of Himachal Pradesh and Mukesh Agnihotri as his deputy, the Congress on Sunday (January 8) expanded the state cabinet by inducting seven legislators, including Vikramaditya Singh, the son of former chief minister Virbhadra Singh. With this, the total strength of the cabinet has gone up to nine and this still leaves scope for the party to induct three more ministers, as a total of 12 are allowed in the hill state. The oath was administered by Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar.
Following a remarkable turn of events in the last six months leading to the assembly polls on November 12, the Congress had turned the tables on the BJP and wrested power by winning 40 seats in the 68-member House. Thereafter, the Congress had chosen Sukhu, an advocate by training and its former state unit president and MLA from Nadaun, to lead the government. Agnihotri, who was Leader of Opposition in the Himachal assembly and MLA from Haroli, was made deputy chief minister.
In going with Sukhu as chief minister, the party had overlooked the claims of several other aspirants, including its Mandi MP and state president Pratibha Singh. A reason for the decision was probably that she had won the Mandi seat in the 2021 by-elections following the demise of her husband, Virbhadra Singh, and her elevation as chief minister would have meant a by-poll to the Lok Sabha constituency. It would have also necessitated another assembly by-election for her as she would have had to get herself elected to the assembly within six months.
While opting for Sukhu, who had demonstrated the support of 24 of the 40 elected MLAs, the party did not ignore the claims by the family of Virbhadhra, its six-term chief minister in the state. During the past month, the Congress is also learnt to have given a lot of thought to providing equal representation to all the districts by either having a minister or a chief parliamentary secretary from there.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge along with party in-charge for Himachal Pradesh Rajeev Shukla, organisation general secretary K.C. Venugopal and general secretary Mukul Wasnik held several rounds of discussions with Sukhu and other state leaders over the issue.
Finally, on Sunday, Vikramaditya Singh, MLA from Shimla (Rural) and six other legislators – Harshwardhan Chauhan from Sirmaur, Jagat Singh Negi from Kinnaur, Rohit Thakur from Jubbal Kotkhai, Dhani Ram Shandil from Solan, Chander Kumar from Jawali and Anirudh Singh from Kasumpti – were administered oath as cabinet ministers.
Following the Cabinet expansion, three of the ministers are now from Shimla district, which incidentally had a total of seven MLA constituencies. Kangra, which had 10 constituencies, has got just one minister while the districts of Bilaspur, Mandi, Kullu and Lahaul and Spiti, remain unrepresented in the Cabinet.
In order to provide a semblance of balance in this allocation, Sukhu administered the oath of office and secrecy to six MLAs as chief parliamentary secretaries. These MLAs, who will get the same facilities as the ministers, are Sunder Singh Thakur from Kullu, Mohan Lal Brakta from Rohru, Ram Kumar Chaudhary from Doon, Ashish Butail from Palampur, Kishori Lal from Baijnath, Sanjay Awasthi from Arki. Through this move, the Congress managed to given representation to some of the districts which had got left out in the Cabinet expansion.