2 women, 1 Muslim among 28 ministers inducted in Nath Cabinet
Bhopal, Dec 25: Over a week after taking charge, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath Tuesday inducted 28 MLAs, including two women and an Independent, into his Cabinet which has a mix of old and new faces, but left out BSP and SP legislators.
Governor Anandiben Patel administered the oath of office to the new ministers at a ceremony in the Raj Bhavan here attended by Nath and senior Congress leaders.
Nath, who did not contest the November 28 Assembly polls and was the only one to take oath last week, is heading the first Congress government in Madhya Pradesh in 15 years.
All the ministers, which included the son of senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, took oath in Hindi and were accorded the Cabinet rank.
Ministers in the previous Digvijay Singh government and senior Congress MLAs like Govind Singh (MLA from Lahar), Arif Aqueel (Bhopal North), Bala Bachchan (Rajpur ST), Sajjan Singh Verma (Sonkutch), Vijay Laxmi Sadho (Maheshawr) and Hukum Singh Karada (Shajapur) found a place in the Nath Cabinet.
Aqueel is the lone Muslim MLA in the cabinet.
Besides, Tulsi Silawat (Sanver) and Prabhuram Chowdhary (Sanchi), both former parliamentary secretaries, were also administered oath.
Jaivardhan Singh, the MLA from Raghogarh and the son of Digvijay Singh, was also inducted into the cabinet.
Jaivardhan Singh, 32, is the youngest minister.
Kasrawad legislator Sachin Yadav, 36, younger brother of former Pradesh Congress Committee chief and ex-Union minister Arun Yadav, was also sworn in.
Besides Sadho, another woman MLA Imarati Devi (elected from Dabra) was inducted into the Cabinet.
Independent MLA Pradeep Jaiswal (Waraseoni), who contested as a Congress rebel, also took oath.
Others who got ministerial berths for the first time are: Brijendra Singh Rathore (Prithvipur), Lakhan Singh Yadav (Bhitarwar), Govind Rajput (Surkhi), Omkar Markam (Dindori), Sukhdeo Panse (Multai), Harsh Yadav (Deori), Kamleshwar Patel (Sihawal), Lakhan Ghanghoriya (Jabalpur East), Tarun Bhanot (Jabalpur West), PC Sharma (Bhopal South-West), Surendra Singh Baghel (Kukshi), Jitu Patwari (Rau), Umang Singhar (Gandhwani), Pradyumn Singh Tomar (Gwalior), Mahendra Singh Sisodiya (Bamori) and Priyavrat Singh (Khilchipur).
According to sources, the names of the ministers were finalised by state Congress leaders, including Nath, party's campaign committee chairman Jyotiraditya Scindia and Digvijay Singh, after discussions with party president Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders.
Nath, took oath as the 18th chief minister of Madhya Pradesh on December 17, had gone to New Delhi last week and returned here along with Scindia Tuesday afternoon after holding discussions with the party leadership on cabinet formation.
Though the Congress, with 114 seats, emerged as the single largest party in the 230-member Assembly, it failed to cross the halfway mark (116) on its own and enlisted the support of the BSP and the SP, which have won two seats and one, respectively.
However, no MLA from the Mayawati-led BSP or the SP was given place in the Cabinet.
Four Independent MLAs, all Congress rebels, have also extended their support to the Nath government, taking the total number of MLAs on the Congress side to 121.
The BJP had won 109 seats.
Meanwhile, supporters of senior Congress MLA K P Singh (Pichhore) staged a protest outside his Bhopal residence demanding his inclusion in the cabinet.
Later in the evening, an informal meeting of the newly formed Cabinet was convened at Indira Bhawan, the PCC headquarters.
On the other hand, a Congress spokesman said the MLA from Gotegaon, N P Prajapati, would be the party's candidate for the post of Speaker.
The first session of the newly elected Assembly is slated to begin from January 7 during which MLAs will take oath.
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Malian defence minister killed in attack that saw jihadis and rebels seize towns, military bases
Dakar (AP): Malian Minister of Defence Gen. Sadio Camara was killed in an attack as jihadi and rebel forces seized towns and military bases across the country, according to a military officer and two other sources on Sunday.
There was no immediate comment from the Malian government.
“Unfortunately, the Ministry of Defence, Gen. Sadio Camara, has been killed during the attack which targeted his house yesterday,” said a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to speak to the media.
Two other people, a civil society leader and a security member, confirmed the information.
Separatist fighters on Saturday joined Islamic militants in launching one of the biggest coordinated attacks on the Malian army in the capital and several other cities that left at least 16 wounded.
The separatists have been fighting for years to create an independent state in northern Mali, while al-Qaida and Islamic State group-aligned militants have been fighting the government for over a decade.
Malian troops and Russian mercenaries withdrew from the northern city of Kidal after the attacks, the rebels said Sunday.
A spokesperson for the Tuareg-led Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, a separatist group, said the Russian Africa Corps troops and the Malian military withdrew from the city after an agreement was reached for their peaceful exit.
“Kidal is declared free,” said FLA spokesperson Mohamed El Maouloud Ramadan.
The Malian army did not respond to requests for comment but in an earlier statement said they were “tracking down terrorist armed groups in Kidal.”
The separatists have been fighting for years to create an independent state in northern Mali. Kidal had long served as a stronghold of the rebellion before being taken by Malian government forces and Russian mercenaries in 2023. Its capture marked a significant symbolic victory for the junta and its Russian allies.
It was the first time the separatists worked alongside the al-Qaida-linked militant group JNIM, which also claimed responsibility for Saturday's attacks on Bamako's international airport and four other cities, including Kidal, in central and northern Mali.
“This operation is being carried out in partnership with the JNIM, which is also committed to defending the people against the military regime in Bamako,” Ramadan said.
Wassim Nasr, a Sahel specialist and senior research fellow at the Soufan Center security think tank, said that the coordination between the two groups, as well as the explicit call for the Russian military to leave, is new.
“The coordination, conducting attacks all over the country at the same time, real coordination on the military level but also on the political level because both claims of both groups they acknowledged that they worked together, this is a first,” said Nasr.
Mali government spokesperson Gen. Issa Ousmane Coulibaly said on state television late Saturday that 16 people were wounded, including civilians and military personnel, and that several militants were killed. He did not provide a death toll.
The governor of Bamako's district, Abdoulaye Coulibaly, announced a three-day overnight curfew, from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
The Economic Community of West African States has condemned the attacks and called on “all states, security forces, regional mechanisms and populations of West Africa to unite and mobilize in a coordinated effort to combat this scourge.”
The separatists called on Russia to “reconsider its support for the military junta in Bamako, whose actions have contributed to the suffering of the civilian population.”
Following military coups, the juntas in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso turned from Western allies to Russia for help in combating Islamic militants. But the security situation has worsened in recent times, with a record number of attacks by militants. Government forces have also been accused of killing civilians they suspect of collaborating with militants.
In 2024, an al-Qaida-linked group claimed an attack on Bamako's airport and a military training camp in the capital, killing scores of people.
Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, said that while the attacks were a major blow to the credibility of Mali's Russian partners, JNIM is unlikely to take control of Bamako in the near term due to opposition from the local population.
“The attacks are a major blow to Russia as the mercenaries had no intelligence about the attacks and were unable to protect major cities. They have unnecessarily worsened the conflict by not distinguishing between civilians and combatants,” Laessing said.
