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Trivendra Rawat sworn in U'khand's ninth CM

Trivendra Singh Rawat, the man with deep RSS roots who also enjoys the trust of the BJP brass, was on Saturday sworn in as the 9th Chief Minister of Uttarakhand.

Nine other MLAs also took oath of office and secrecy along with Rawat as part of the two-tier ministry, which is a mix of old and new faces.

Rawat and his ministerial colleagues were administered the oath by Governor K K Paul at a ceremony which was attended among others by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Uma Bharti, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, among others.

Apart from Rawat, seven MLAs were sworn in as Cabinet Ministers and two as Ministers of State.

The seven Cabinet Ministers are: Satpal Maharaj, Prakash Pant, Harak Singh Rawat, Yashpal Arya, Subodh Uniyal, Madan Kaushik and Arvind Pandey. The two MoS are Dhan Singh Rawat and Rekha Arya.

Five former Congress MLAs, who had defected to the BJP, were rewarded with ministerial berths. They are Subodh Uniyal, Harak Singh Rawat, Yashpal Arya, Rekha Arya and Satpal Maharaj, who was himself a contender for the top post. While the first four had defected to BJP after a bitter fight with the previous Congress Chief Minister Harish Rawat in May last year, Maharaj had joined the saffron party soon after Rawat was made the CM.

Five of those sworn in on Saturday are first-time ministers, including Subodh Uniyal, Arvind Pandey, Rekha Arya, Dhan Singh Rawat and Satpal Maharaj.

Yashpal Arya, Harak Singh Rawat, Prakash Pant and Madan Kaushik had been ministers in the past too.

An effort to strike a regional balance was also evident in the choice of ministers, with five of them from Garhwal and four from Kumaon.rivendra Singh Rawat, 56, was elected the leader of the BJP legislature party Saturday after the party's landslide win in the hill state on March 11. BJP bagged 57 of the state's 70 seats, decimating the Congress.
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