Madhya Pradesh: Gaur forms 32-member ministry

Three days after taking over the reins in Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minister Babulal Gaur on Friday formed a 32-member ministry dropping four members of the previous Uma Bharti ministry and inducting three new faces.

Sixteen of them were sworn in as Cabinet ministers and three as ministers of state with independent charge.

The ministers were administered oath by Governor Balram Jakhar at a simple ceremony at the Raj Bhawan in Bhopal.

BJP leader Kailash Vijayvergiya, inducted as a Cabinet minister, could not take oath along with the others and was sworn-in half an hour later in a special ceremony when he arrived from Indore in a helicopter after procuring bails on two warrants issued by a court there.

Alka Jain, Dhul Singh Choudhary, Anchal Sonkar and Devi Singh Patel, members of the previous ministry, failed to find a berth in the Gaur ministry, which had three new faces in Umashankar Gupta, Antar Singh Arya and Rampal Singh -- all ministers of state.

Gaur took over reins from Uma Bharti on Tuesday after she quit in the wake of a non-bailable warrant issued against her by a court in Hubli, Karnataka, in a 10-year old rioting case.