Madhya Pradesh cabinet expansion: Ex-Congress MLA Ramniwas Rawat to take oath on Monday

Bhopal: After around seven months in office, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav will go for a mini-expansion of his council of ministers on Monday.

The cabinet expansion which will happen at the Raj Bhawan in Bhopal at 9 am will see sixth-time Congress MLA Ramniwas Rawat (who joined the BJP on April 30) take oath as cabinet minister.

Rawat, a powerful OBC leader from the Gwalior-Chambal region is the sixth-time MLA from Vijaypur seat of Sheopur district.

Having not been considered for any key posts, including the state Congress chief and the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the new look state Congress in December 2023, Rawat had ended his decades-long association with the Congress and joined the BJP on April 30, just a week before four Lok Sabha seats of the Gwalior-Chambal region voted on May 7.

However, Rawat is yet to quit his Vidhan Sabha membership, owing to which the Congress has recently petitioned the MP Vidhan Sabha Speaker, seeking his disqualification from the House membership.

Rawat joining the BJP is believed to have played an important role in the saffron party winning the Morena seat, which was otherwise locked in a tough battle. Rawat is seen as one of those leaders who’ve long been close to Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia’s family but had stayed back in the Congress, even when Scindia along with 22 Congress MLAs joined the BJP in March 2020.

While Rawat’s induction into the cabinet is nearly certain on Monday morning, speculations are rife about the possible induction of another former Congress MLA, Kamlesh Shah, into the expanded council of ministers.

Shah, the third-time Congress MLA from Amarwara-ST of Chhindwara district had quit the Congress and the Vidhan Sabha membership on March 29 to join the BJP. He is the ruling party candidate in the July 10 Amarwara-ST assembly by-elections, the result of which will be declared on July 13.

The Dr Mohan Yadav-led government presently has 30 ministers, excluding the CM. It has two deputy CMs (who are also cabinet ministers), 18 cabinet ministers and 10 ministers of state, while there are still at least 3 vacancies.

Three sitting Congress MLAs joined the BJP during the four-phase Lok Sabha polls in Madhya Pradesh. They include third-time tribal MLA Kamlesh Shah, sixth-time OBC MLA Ramniwas Rawat and first-time scheduled caste MLA Nirmala Sapre.

This newspaper had reported on June 29 about the induction of Rawat in the Dr Mohan Yadav-led state cabinet after the Vidhan Sabha’s monsoon session was over.