: Six districts from Malabar, excluding Wayanad, will get nine berths in the 19-member Left Democratic Front (LDF) Cabinet.
Kannur district will have the largest contingent with four Ministers, including Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan while Ernakulam, Kottayam, Idukki and Wayanad will go unrepresented in the Ministry.
Other Ministers from Kannur are K.K. Shylaja and E.P. Jayarajan, both CPI (M), and Ramachandran Kadanappally of Congress (Secular). Alappuzha and Thrissur will have three Ministers, while Kozhikode and Kollam share two berths and others, Palakkad, Malappuram, Kasaragod, Pathanamthitta and Thiruvananthapuram, one each.
Weightage
The Ministers of the Left coalition have been chosen without any religious or caste consideration, at least on the peripheral level. But the CPI (M) and CPI, major partners, have given weightage to the districts, which have either returned more legislators or where their leaders emerged victorious.
The CPI (M) heavyweights are T.M. Thomas Isaac and G. Sudhakaran (Alappuzha); A.C. Moideen and C. Ravindranathan (Thrissur); J. Mercykutty Amma (Alappuzha); A.K. Balan (Palakkad); Kadakkamppally Surendran (Thiruvananthapuram); and T.P. Ramakrishnan (Kozhikode).
The CPI has chosen four new faces — V.S. Sunil Kumar (Thrissur), E. Chandrasekharan (Kasaragod), P. Thilothaman (Alappuzha) and K. Raju ( Kollam)
Malappuram nominee
K.T. Jaleel, Independent backed by the LDF, will be the sole representative from Malappuram , a district which had six Ministers , mostly from the Indian Union Muslim League in the Oommen Chandy Ministry. The Ministry will also have two women members, one from the CPI(M) and CPI.
After hectic deliberations, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Janata Dal (Secular) have zeroed in on A.K. Saseendran and Mathew T. Thomas respectively for the Cabinet berths. The portfolios of the Ministers have been decided earlier. However, some of the portfolios that used to be held by RSP and Kerala Congress (Joseph) would be shared among the constituents.
