NEW DELHI: A 19-member Cabinet was sworn in along with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh at Rashtrapati Bhawan this evening in the first round of ministry

formation. There were four new faces among them. Among the new entrants to the union Cabinet are Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, Rajasthan Congress party president CP Joshi, All India Congress Committee general secretary Veerappa Moily and former Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna.

Anand Sharma, who earlier was a minister of state for External Affairs and also held independent charge of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry gets a Cabinet berth and so does Bijoy Krishna Handique who was the minister of state for Chemicals and Fertilisers and Parliamentary Affairs. Former Human Resources Development minister Arjun Singh has been dropped from the Cabinet. According to officials in the Prime Minister’s Office more Cabinet ministers, ministers of state as well as junior ministers will be inducted in the second round of oath taking on Tuesday. After the failure of talks with the DMK on the distribution of ministerial portfolios, crisis managers in the Congress party thought it would be best to go ahead with the first round of oath taking where sure-shot Cabinet ministers would be included. With the DMK insisting on seven ministerial berths — three Cabinet

level, two ministers of state (MoS) with independent charge and two other MoS — Congress managers

decided they would engage in another round of discussions to arrive at a compromise formula.

Gaffe at sombre ceremony

New Delhi: Congress leader Kamal Nath unwittingly injected humour into the sombre swearing-in ceremony of the new government on Friday when he began to take his oath before President Pratibha Patil could prompt him, and then started walking off without signing the register. Perhaps a little too eager to be sworn in as minister, Kamal Nath walked up and said in Hindi Main Kamal Nath much to the amusement of the gathering at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. — HNS