All India N.R. Congress (AINRC) chief N Rangasamy was sworn in as the chief minister of Puducherry on Friday in a brief five minute-ceremony held at Raj Nivas at Puducherry. He will lead a coalition government, with members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in his cabinet.
On Friday afternoon, the Lieutenant Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan administered the oath of office and secrecy to Ramasamy, giving him his fourth stint in the office of the CM. N Rangasamy, who was the only legislator who was sworn in today, took the oath in Tamil.
While Karnataka is the lone southern state in India with the BJP in the ruling government, the party’s induction in the Puducherry cabinet points that the Narendra Modi-led party is expanding its political footprint in the region.
The BJP also fared well in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, where it won four assembly seats, infringing upon the Dravidian parties’ fiefdom.
Union Minister of State for Home and BJP leader Kishan Reddy attended the oathtaking ceremony. Reddy told presspersons that the BJP and AINRC would have three ministers each and they would sworn in the coming days. These six ministers, and Rangasamy, would bring the strength of the cabinet to seven members.
BJP’s A Namassivayam, who was unanimously elected as the leader of the BJP’s legislature wing, is tipped to be the deputy chief minister. This would be the first ever instance of the union territory having a deputy chief minister.
The AINRC won ten seats while the BJP won six, giving them the simple majority in the thirty-member house. The six independent MLAs are mostly supporters of N Rangasamy.
The DMK won six seats out of the thirteen constituencies it had contested, while the Congress managed to only win two of the fourteen seats contested.
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