Naveen inducts 9 ministers, reshuffles cabinet

Bhubaneswar: Putting an end to the two-month long speculation, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday reshuffled his ministry. Kalpataru Das who joined ministry for the first time was inducted as cabinet minister and given the portfolio of Panchayati Raj and parliamentary affairs.

Under the new role Dr Damodar Rout will take charge as the Health and Family Welfare and MSME minister and Subrat Tarai has been appointed as the new Commerce & Transport minister. Bangiriposi legislator Sarojini Hembram will take charge as the minister of Handlooms, Handicrafts & Textiles.

Jeypore MLA Rabinarayan Nanda will be the new School & Mass Education minister of Odisha. Under the new role former health minister Prasanna Acharya will serve as the new finance minister while Pratap Dev will be the new minister of Food Supply, Employment and Technical Training.

Rajanikant Singh has been appointed as minister of Steel and Mines while Niranjan Pujari will be new Excise minister.

Earlier the day Governor M C Bhandare administered the oath of office and secrecy to all nine ministers.

The other ministers of state who will take their new charges include Arun Sahu – Energy, I & PR and Ramesh Majhi – Sports & Youth Affairs, Grievances and Pension.

The cabinet ministers with new portfolios include Bikram Arukh - Rural Development & Co-operative,  Debi Prasad Mishra – Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry, Usha Devi – Women & Child Development, Raghunath Mohanty – Housing, Urban Develment, Law and Information technology, Maheswar Mohanty – Tourism, Culture, Planning & Co-ordination and Bijoyshree Routroy – Environment & Forest, Labour, ESI.