Dehradun: Pushkar Singh Dhami was sworn in as the 11th chief minister of Uttarakhand, along with an 11-member cabinet, here on Sunday.
The oath of office was administered on Dhami and his ministers by Governor Baby Rani Maurya at a simple function held on the lawns of the Raj Bhawan in the presence of a host of MPs and MLAs of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and senior government officials.
No new face has been inducted into Dhami's cabinet, which remains as it was under his predecessor Tirath Singh Rawat. The only difference is that this time, all the ministers are of cabinet rank.
The ministers sworn in on Sunday are Satpal Maharaj, Harak Singh Rawat, Bansidhar Bhagat, Yashpal Arya, Bishan Singh Chufal, Subodh Uniyal, Arvind Pandey, Ganesh Joshi, Dhan Singh Rawat, Rekha Arya and Yatishwaranand.
Rekha Arya, Dhan Singh Rawat and Yatishwaranand, who were ministers of state in Tirath Rawat's cabinet, have been elevated to cabinet rank.
Earlier in the day, Dhami met Satpal Maharaj at his residence with a bouquet of flowers amid reports that the senior leader and a few other MLAs of the saffron party were sulking since Saturday as they were not happy with his election as the new leader of the BJP legislature party in Uttarakhand.
Dhami later said there was no resentment anywhere. All those said to have been unhappy with the party high-command over its choice of new chief minister were present at the swearing-in ceremony and were sworn in as ministers.
Hours before taking oath, Dhamin waded into controversy because of a map of India he tweeted in 2015. The map, purportedly showing "Akhand Bharat (undivided India)" at some point in history, had missed out key parts of present-day India. Twitter users lost no time in digging out the post, pointing out that the Indian map, demarcated by a white line on the red "Akhand Bharat" background, left out parts of Ladakh and the areas currently occupied by Pakistan.
with agency inputs