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Akhilesh era begins in Uttar Pradesh

On March 15, 2012, Akhilesh Yadav was sworn in as the 33rd chief minister of Uttar Pradesh at a huge open air ceremony in Lucknow on Thursday (March 15). The ceremony began at 11.35 am and lasted for about an hour, during which 19 ministers of the cabinet rank and 28 ministers of state were administered the oath of office secrecy by state’s Governor B.L. Joshi.
The new cabinet ministers are: Mohd Azam Khan, Shivpal Singh Yadav, Raja Mahendra Aridaman Singh, Ambika Chaudhary, Ahmad Hasan, Waqar Ahmad Shah, Anand Singh, Balram Yadav, Om Prakash Singh, Awadhsh Prasad, Parasnath Yadav, Ram Govind Chaudhary, Durga Prasad Yadav, Brahma Shanker Tripathi, Kameshwar Upadhyaya, Raja Ram Pandey, Raj Kishore Singh, Shiv Kumar Beria and Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya.
The new ministers of state are Abhishek Mishra, first time MLA from Lucknow North, Iqbal Mahmood, Mahboob Ali, Shahid Manzoor, Riyaz Ahmad, Farid Mahfooz Kidwai, Waseem Ahmad, Narendra Singh Yadav,  Shiv Pratap Yadav, Rajendra Singh Rana, Moolchandra Chauhan, Arvind Kumar Singh Gope, Rajeev Kumar Singh, Vinod Kumar Singh Pandit Singh, Bhagwat Sharan Gangwar, Narendra Verma, Ram Murti Verma, Surendra Singh Patel, Chitranjan Swarup,  Manpal Singh Verma, Kamaal Akhtar, Shankhlal Majhi, Kailash Chaurasia, Rampal Rajvanshi, Manoj Paras, Ramkaran Arya, Aruna Kumari Kori and Jagdish Sonkar.
Significantly, there are ten Muslims in the ministry. The induction of Raja Bhaiyya came as a surprise as he has a long list of criminal charges against him. He had been arrested in 2002 in the Mayawati regime and POTA was slapped on him. He was released after Mulayam came to power in 2004. During the campaign, Akhilesh had taken a specific stand against the induction of D.P. Yadav saying there was no place for “criminal elements” in his party.
The ceremony was attended by several high-profile individuals. These included Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala, former UP governor and All India Congress Committee treasurer Moti Lal Vora, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leaders Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri , industrialist Anil Ambani, Subrata Roy Sahara, SP Rajya Sabha Member Jaya Bachchan and film actor Zayed Khan.
A huge structure had been created for the ceremony at the La Martiniere College grounds and besides the special guests, about 10,000 people thronged the venue. People had started moving towards the venue since as early as 9 am and hundreds of vehicles, mostly SUVs, were parked as much as one kilometre away from the venue. As soon as the ceremony ended, the hordes of enthusiastic Samajwadi Party supporters jumped over the barriers, rushed to the specially-erected podium and started jumping and dancing on it. The tables, chairs, microphones, public address system, flower pots, garlands and the backdrop etc were grabbed, thrown around and came crashing down. Within minutes the entire venue looked as if it had been hit by a tornado. Later, the new Chief minister ordered the identification of the trouble-makers and many of the SP workers responsible for the ruckus were suspended from the party.
(Originally written on March 15, 2012)

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