Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje inducted nine Cabinet Ministers and three Ministers of State into her Cabinet on Friday, a week after the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in the State. Two of the Ministers inducted are accused in the high-profile fake encounter cases.
Governor Margaret Alva administered the oath of office and secrecy to the 12 Ministers at a ceremony in Raj Bhavan here. Ms. Raje has given representation to 10 districts in the Cabinet formation, while taking care of the caste balance. The Ministers of State will have independent charge.
The Cabinet Ministers sworn in at the ceremony were Gulab Chand Kataria, Rajendra Singh Rathore, Kalicharan Saraf, Kailash Meghwal, Sanwarlal Jat, Prabhulal Saini, Gajendra Singh Kheenvsar, Yunus Khan and Nandlal Meena — all of them were Ministers in the previous BJP regimes.
Mr. Kataria, a Home Minister between 2003 and 2008, was named by the CBI as an accused in the infamous Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case of Gujarat, in its supplementary charge sheet filed earlier this year. He later obtained anticipatory bail from a special CBI court in Mumbai.
The arrest of Mr. Rathore by the CBI in April last year, for his alleged involvement in the Dara Singh encounter killing in 2006, led to a confrontation between the Congress and the BJP, with the latter alleging “political misuse” of the premier investigating agency. A Sessions court discharged Mr. Rathore, while rejecting the CBI’s charge of criminal conspiracy against him. The Rajasthan High Court set aside the Sessions Court’s decision but the Supreme Court stayed criminal proceedings against him in October last year.
