Ex-CM Champai among 11 leaders take oath as ministers in Hemant Soren govt

Former chief minister Champai Soren and 10 other leaders of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-led coalition took oath as ministers in the Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand on Monday.

Champai had resigned from the post of CM on July 3, a day before JMM executive president Hemant Soren took oath as the 13th chief minister of Jharkhand on July 4.

Jharkhand Governor CP Radhakrishnan administered the oath of office and secrecy to the 11 leaders at a function in the Raj Bhavan in the presence of Chief Minister Hemant Soren and other senior politicians of the JMM-led alliance and government officials.

The new faces in the 12-member cabinet, which includes the chief minister, are Congress's Jamtara MLA Irfan Ansari, Mahagama MLA Deepika Pandey Singh and JMM's Latehar MLA Baidynath Ram.

Ram's name had been excluded at the last moment from the list of ministers in the previous Champai Soren cabinet, which he had termed an "insult".

Those who retained their ministerial berths include Rameshwar Oraon and Banna Gupta of the Congress, besides JMM's Mithilesh Kumar Thakur, Hafizul Hasan, Dipak Birua and Bebi Devi and Rashtriya Janata Dal's Satyanand Bhokta.

Earlier in the day, the Hemant Soren government won a vote of confidence in the assembly amid a walkout by opposition members.

Hemant Soren was released from jail on June 28 after the Jharkhand high court granted bail to him in a money laundering case linked to an alleged land scam. He had resigned as the CM shortly before his arrest on January 31 by the Enforcement Directorate.