Siddaramaiah takes oath as Chief Minister of Karnataka for a second term at Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru.

DK Shivakumar has also sworn-in as the Deputy Chief Minister.

The oath was administered by Karnataka Governor Thawarchand Gehlot.

The oath taking ceremony of the newly elected Congress government has been attended by party’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge, former president Rahul Gandhi, senior leader Priyanka Gandhi and other senior leaders.

In the morning, Congress released the list of 8 ministers who will be taking the oath as the cabinet ministers in the newly elected government. The list of ministers include senior Karnataka Congress leader G Parameshwara and also Priyank Kharge, son of Mallikarjun Kharge.

As Congress forms its government in the fourth state, all chief ministers where the party is in ruling have attended the oath taking ceremony in Bengaluru.

Rajasthan Chief Ministyer Ashok Gehlot, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu have made their attendance.

Several opposition leaders who were sent an invitation by Kharge to attend the ceremony are also present including NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Farooq Abdullah and other senior opposition party leaders.

The oath taking ceremony is being held exactly a week after the Karnataka results were declared, in which Congress won 135 seats out of the total 224 seats in the state.

After the victory, tensions within Congress flared up for days with the decision of whom should it name the next chief minister. Both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar were on a tough race to sit on the Chief Minister’s chair.

It became difficult for the Congress to decide as Siddaramaiah already held the experience of running the state’s administration as the CM for a full term, while, Shivakumar is an energetic face of the party in the state who gave his sweat putting out all his efforts to make the party win with such a huge mandate.

The Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab has completed 14 months in office. AAP came to power breaking the state’s five-decades’ tradition alternating between the Congress and the Akalis, becoming the first non-Congress, non-Akali party to form a government in Punjab.

In the 2022 Punjab Assembly elections, AAP won 92 seats of the total 117 seats in the state. The victory was AAP’s first-ever government formation outside Delhi.

The landslide sent out a message that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s popularity was increasing across the country, which was a point of concern for the national parties.

A former stage artist with only 10 years in active politics, Bhagwant Mann’s elevation to rule the state came as a surprise to many.

After Mann was declared AAP’s chief ministerial candidate, a large group of experts said Kejriwal had made a huge mistake in handling the responsibilities to Mann, who had no background in running an administration.

Political experts used to say, Mann is being handed with a state that has 23 districts, 237 towns, and 12581 villages. But the Punjab CM has come away looking the victor against these doubts of experts. Punjab faces many challenges, the biggest being sharing the border with Pakistan, a channel that is used to smuggle drugs, illegal arms and exports, a big threat for the state and for the country.

As Mann completes 14 months as Chief Minister, he seems to have had a clear thought to change all these narratives that were in the air linked to his name.

Let’s take a look on how Mann and his government has thrived so far

Tough on corruption

CM Mann has made a space for himself among the people and is often tagged as a man who is tough when it comes to acting against corruption.

Clean governance and taking a clear stand against corruption is what his government is known for, especially after the sacking of then Health Minister Vijay Singla, when corruption charges were levelled against him. And it was not just one man shown the door for corruption, another Punjab Minister Fauja Singh Sarari was also forced to resign over graft.

Mann has won wide-spread popularity for his government’s zero-tolerance policy against corruption. From political leaders to senior government officials, no one is spared in his regime even at the assistant inspector general of the police level, people have been sent to jail.

Agriculture

The recent passed budget of the government increased an outlay for crop diversification in the state, which was seen a major step taken in favour of the agriculture sector.

CM Mann also promised to include Moong dal under the Minimum Support Price (MSP) scheme benefiting farmers growing the pulse.

Free Electricity

In just four months after coming to power, the government also fulfilled the manifesto promise of 300 units of free electricity.

Some of the other major decisions that have helped the Punjab governement get a pat on its back was introducing one MLA, one pension scheme, scrapping of load enhancement fee on tubewells, launching Aam Aadmi Clinics (a replica of the Mohalla clinics in Delhi) and such.

Mann re-introduced the old pension scheme scrapped in 2004, under which a retiree is entitled for 50-percent of his last drawn salary, a step that wooed the working government staff and the retired staff across Punjab.

The Mann government has also been decisive on clearing possession of illegally encroached government lands. Reports said the Punjab government has till now freed some 10,000 acres of encroached land.

On Friday, Mann announced another drive against illegal occupation on government encroached lands starting from June 1.

The Mann government is often charged by the opposition for leaving the administrative control of the state in Delhi (read Kejriwal) instead of keeping it in Punjab.

The Bhagwant Mann government’s good performance is crucial for the Aam Aadmi Party to expand its national footprint in the 2024 Lok Sabha Polls. It wants to do well in Punjab for Lok Sabha and the Haryana Assembly elections next year, which the AAP has been eyeing for long and expects a Punjab-like outcome as they are neighbouring states.

Hours after Kiren Rijiju was relieved from his duty as the Union Law Minister, the Minister of State for Law and Justice Satya Pal Singh Baghel has been moved to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

After Rijiju was dropped from the Law Ministry, Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal was allotted the portfolio of Union Minister of State (Independent in-charge) for the Ministry of Law in addition to already held portfolios as the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Ministry of Culture.

As per a convention, a ministry which is already headed by a Minister of state with independent in-charge cannot have a deputy, which is because Baghel was moved to Health Ministry.

A press communique of the Rastrapati Bhavan stated that the President of India on the advice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi directed to assign SP Baghel as the Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare in place of the Minister of State for Law and Justice.

The move of cabinet re-shuffle by the government was surprising to drop Rijiju from Law and appoint him as the Union Minister of Earth Sciences earlier this morning.

SP Baghel, a former Mulayam Singh Yadav loyalist and Bahujan Samaj party member, joined the BJP in 2014.

Baghel was brought into politics by late Mulayam Singh Yadav, Baghel was a police officer who back in the time used to be in the security team of Yadav while he was the Chief Minister.

Later, Yadav brought Baghel into politics and gave various positions within the party and later in 1998, Baghel made his electoral debut fighting from UP’s Jalesar Lok Sabha seat on a SP ticket , which he won and repeated the same in the consecutive 1999 and 2004 polls.

Later in 2009 after being denied ticket, Baghel joined BSP and lost the contest against SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav in Firozabad but a year later the BSP made him a Rajya Sabha member but in 2014, he joined BJP and again contested Firozabad Lok Sabha seat, this time against son of SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav but was defeated.

Later in 2017 UP assembly elections, the BJP fielded him from a Scheduled Caste reserved Tunda seat in Firozabad, where he marked victory and was made the Minister for Animal Husbandry, Fisheries, Minor Irrigation and Underground Water. He stepped down from the post after getting elected to the Lok Sabha in 2019 general polls. In 2021, he was inducted to PM Modi’s cabinet.