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After the shuffle of leaders within the Congress, the UPA government is going to introduce four new Cabinet ministers and four new ministers of state as the party readies for the 2014 general elections.
Sisram Ola, Oscar Fernandes, Girija Vyas and KS Rao will be sworn in as Cabinet ministers, reported PTI quoting sources.
According to a CNBC report, Sisram Ola from Rajasthan could take over as the new Labour Minister as Mallikarjuna Kharge is expected to be shifted to head the Railways Ministry thanks to the departure of CP Joshi.
Vyas is reported to be set to take over the ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation after Ajay Maken was also shifted from the cabinet to work for the party in the upcoming Delhi and national elections.
Fernandes, who resigned from his party post, is also set to be accommodated in the Cabinet.
The four new ministers of state are expected to be Manikrao Gavit, Santosh Chowdhury, JD Seelam, EMS Natchiappan, reported PTI.
The exercise of appointing the new ministers comes a day after the overhaul of the Congress party apparatus in which Maken and Joshi along with Ambika Soni and Gurudas Kamat were brought in as General Secretaries by the party which dropped Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Oscar Fernandes from these posts.
Joshi, who was holding dual portfolios of Surface Transport and Highways and Railways, resigned following “directives” from the Congress high command. Maken had expressed his desire to work for the party.
The reshuffle of the Council of Ministers is expected to be the last such exercise in UPA-II with Lok Sabha elections less than a year away. This is the second reshuffle since October last year.
The latest vacancies in the Cabinet were created by the resignations of Union Ministers PK Bansal and Ashwani Kumar.
Bansal quit as the Railways Minister last month in the wake of bribery scandal involving his nephew and a Railway Board member.
Kumar resigned as the Law Minister following a controversy over vetting of a CBI probe report on coal blocks allocation scam.
with inputs from PTI
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