Kerala cabinet to expand, 3 new ministers to be sworn in

The three ministers are Ramachandran Kadanapally from Congress(S), Jose Thettayil from Janata Dal-Secular and P J Joseph of Kerala Congress (Joseph).

While both Ramachandran Kadanapally and JoseThettayil are fresh faces in the cabinet, P J Joseph is making a come back after demitting office as the Public Works Department minister following a complaint by a women passenger in a domestic flight that he had molested her.

Joseph resigned and is now coming back following the Chennai high court disallowing the prosecution of the case.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist state secretariat is meeting with the party All India general secretary Prakash Karat also taking part in it to give the final touches on the portfolios for the incumbent ministers.

According to Rajbhavan sources, where the swearing in would take place , the ceremony is scheduled at 11.30 am on Monday.

Ramachandran Kadanapally of the Congress(S) is considered one of the spotless politicians of Kerala and it is the CPI-M state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan who stood for the inclusion of the veteran leader in the Achuthanandan cabinet.

He was the former state president of the student body of the Congress, Kerala Students Union and created history in 1971 by crushing former CM and veteran communist leader E K Nayanar from the Kasargod constituency.

Ramachandran Kadanapally was only 26 when he defeated Nayanar and is considered one of the nomadic tales in the political history of Kerala as Kasargod has always been a communist bastion and even now is retained by the CPI-M.

Jose Thettayil got the opportunity to become a minister after the JD-S split in the state following the recent Lok Sabha elections and the then minister Mathew T Thomas put in his papers.

Of the five MLA's of JD-S, both Jose Thettayil and Mathew T Thomas stood with the Left front while the other three MLA's went along with the state president Veerendrakumar.

While Achuthanandan had strongly opposed giving the ministerial berth to Jose Thettayil, it was, according to sources in the CPI-M, Pinarayi Vijayan who had stood for him.