Karnataka cabinet expansion: 24 MLAs, including 1 woman, take oath as ministers

Karnataka got a full cabinet on Saturday, with 24 Congress MLAs taking oath as ministers, a week after chief minister Siddaramaiah, deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar and eight other ministers took an oath of office.

The Congress on Friday announced the names of 24 more ministers, taking the strength of the cabinet to 34, the maximum allowed under the law.

Of the new names, six hail from the Lingayat community, four from the Vokkaliga community, three from scheduled castes, two from scheduled tribes, and five from other backward classes. The Muslim, Jain, Brahmin and Namdhari Reddy communities have one representative each in this list. Only one woman is part of the cabinet.

The announcement came after four days of hectic deliberations between Siddaramaiah, Shivakumar and the Congress leadership in Delhi, attempting to strike a balance between the aspirations of leaders from different castes, regions and allegiances. This was made particularly tricky given the Congress’s impressive victory, the best in the state since 1989, winning 135 seats in the 224-member assembly.

Here's the list of ministers who took oath:

HK Patil

Krishna Byre Gowda

N Cheluvarayaswamy

K Venkatesh

HC Mahadevappa

Eshwar Khandre

Kyathasandra N. Rajanna

Dinesh Gundu Rao

Sharanabasappa Darshanapur

Shivanand Patil

Timmapur Ramappa Balappa

SS Mallikarjun

Tangadagi Shivaraj Sangappa

Sharanaprakash Rudrappa

Patil Mankal Vaidya

Laxmi R. Hebbalkar

Rahim Khan

D. Sudhakar

Santhosh S. Lad

NS Boseraju

Suresha BS

Madhu Bangarappa

Dr M.C. Sudhakar

B. Nagendra