In the first cabinet expansion of the Bhagwant Mann-led government after AAP came to power in the state during the assembly elections earlier this year, five AAP MLAs took oath as ministers in the Punjab government.
Punjab Governor Banwarilal Purohit administered the oath of office and secrecy to the MLAs at the Guru Nanak Dev Auditorium of Punjab Raj Bhavan in Chandigarh on Monday evening. All of them took oath in Punjabi.
Barring two-time Sunam MLA Aman Arora, four others have become MLAs for the first time.
Arora took oath first, followed by Amritsar South MLA Dr Inderbir Singh Nijjar.
Later, Guru Har Sahai MLA Fauja Singh Sarai, Chetan Singh Jaurmajra representing Samana and Kharar MLA Anmol Gagan Mann were sworn in as cabinet ministers.
Anmol Gagan Mann is the second woman to become a cabinet minister in the cabinet led by Mann.
Of the five new faces, four MLAs are from Malwa region and one from Majha region.
With the addition of five more ministers, the strength of the Mann-led cabinet now stands at 15 including the chief minister. There are 18 berths in the cabinet including that of the Chief Minister.
In March, 10 MLAs, including eight MLAs, were made ministers after AAP formed the government after winning the assembly elections in Punjab.
However, in May, Health Minister Vijay Singla was sacked from the state cabinet on corruption charges, taking the number of ministers to nine.
AAP returned to power in Punjab by winning 92 seats out of the total 117.
Mann had gone to Delhi last week to meet party high command Arvind Kejriwal. According to party sources, the cabinet expansion of Punjab was discussed during this meeting and the names of possible ministers were also mentioned.
However, when asked about this, the Punjab Chief Minister said that “there was no discussion about cabinet expansion in the meeting with Kejriwal, we will take a decision on it in Punjab”.
After the meeting, news came on Saturday that the Bhagwant Mann government is going to expand the cabinet.
This expansion of the cabinet comes at a time when AAP recently lost the Sangrur Lok Sabha by-election and civic polls are also due in Punjab. Looking at the situation, it is believed that this cabinet expansion is an attempt to reconcile accordingly.