Four women inducted into Gujral ministry

Prime Minister I K Gujral on Tuesday expanded his one-and-a-half-month-old ministry by inducting four women ministers of state to give adequate representation to the fair sex in the ministry.

With this, the strength of the United Front government at the Centre has gone up to 44, including the prime minister.

The four new ministers are: Ratnamala Savanur, Kamala Sinha, Jayanthi Natarajan and Renuka Choudhury.

Savanur is a Janata Dal member of the Lok Sabha from Karnataka while Sinha, Natarajan and Choudhury are members of the Rajya Sabha. Sinha represents the JD from Bihar and Choudhury the Telugu Desam from Andhra Pradesh.

Natarajan belongs to the Tamil Maanila Congress but is listed as a Congress member in the Rajya Sabha.

Savanur came to the limelight after she defeated former Union minister B Shankaranand in the Chikodi reserved constituency in the last general elections.

The new ministers were administered the oaths of office and secrecy by President S D Sharma at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan

Vice-President K R Narayanan, former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues and several state governors were among those present.

With their inclusion, the Gujral ministry will have five women ministers. Hitherto, only Minister of State for Coal Kanti Singh represented women in the ministry. Singh is a Lok Sabha member of the JD from Bihar.

The ministry now has 18 Cabinet ministers, 10 ministers of state (independent charge) and 15 ministers of state.

UNI