Sonowal expanding ministry on Thursday

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, April 24: Putting all speculations to rest, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal is going to expand his ministry with the induction of more faces on April 26, 2018.

According to highly-placed sources at Dispur, the new ministers to be inducted will take oath of office and secrecy at 10 am at Raj Bhawan on Thursday. As many as eight berths of ministers have been lying vacant ever since Sonowal took oath as the Chief Minister on May 24, 2016. This makes it clear that Sonowal is going to expand his ministry after almost one year and 11 months.

There had been speculations from various quarters on the expansion of his ministry by the Chief Minister. Many tentative time-frames for ministry expansion given by State BJP president Ranjit Kumar Dass were missed. The latest tour of the Chief Minister to New Delhi on April 20, 2018 and his meeting with party president Amit Shah in the presence of State Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma could be considered as the architect of the ministry expansion. Sonowal, according to sources, did get a clear-cut green signal from the party high command for the expansion of his ministry.  

The nod from the party high command has been followed by an immediate nod from Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well.

However, the information stops short of making it clear if Sonowal is going to fill up all the eight vacant berths in his ministry or only six or seven of them. This, however, is more than final that each of the alliance partners – the AGP and the BPF – is to get one berth in the expansion. At present the ministry has two ministers each from the AGP and the BPF.       

With the Chief Minister yet to make the names of the would-be ministers public now speculations are on about the lucky ones.