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Bihar gets 11 representatives in Vajpayee ministry

Bihar, which has returned 23 Bharatiya Janata Party and 17 Janata Dal-United members to the Lok Sabha, gets the maximum representation (11) in the 70-member Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministry sworn in today.

The state has been allocated five Cabinet positions and six ministers of state. Four top JD-U leaders -- George Fernandes, Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan and Sharad Yadav -- are among the Cabinet ministers. From the BJP, Yashwant Sinha is the lone Cabinet minister from the state. However, the BJP got five of the six MoS positions.

Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, the states where the National Democratic Alliance virtually grabbed two-third of the seats, and Maharashtra have eight ministers each in the government.

Maharashtra finds five Cabinet berths and three MoS. Among the Cabinet ministers are Ram Jethmalani (independent member of the Rajya Sabha), former chief minister Manohar Joshi and Suresh Prabhu (both Shiv Sena), Pramod Mahajan and Ram Naik (elevated from MoS) of the BJP. The BJP gets two MoS and the Sena one.

All the eight ministers from Madhya Pradesh belong to the BJP. The state gets two Cabinet posts (Satyanarain Jatiya and former chief minister Sunderlal Patwa), one MoS with independent charge (firebrand leader Uma Bharti) and five MoS.

Of the eight ministers from Tamil Nadu, three belong to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (including Murasoli Maran and T R Balu who have Cabinet rank), two to the Marumalarchi DMK (both MoS, one of them with independent charge), one to the BJP (P R Kumaramangalam -- Cabinet rank), and two to the Pattali Makkal Katchi (N T Shanmugam, MoS with independent charge and E Ponnuswami, MoS).

Uttar Pradesh, where the seat tally of the NDA slumped from 59 to 31, gets only six berths -- two in the Cabinet, one MoS with independent charge and three MoS. Other than Vajpayee, Murli Monohar Joshi is the only one from the state in the Cabinet. Maneka Gandhi (BJP-backed independent) is an MoS with independent charge. All other ministers from the state belong to the BJP.

UNI

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