Narayanasamy grand swearing-in ceremony on beach today

Puducherry: The AICC general secretary and former Union minister of state for PMO, V. Narayanasamy will be sworn in as the Chief Minister of Puducherry on Monday.

The 5-member council of ministers will also be sworn in along with Narayanasamy in a grand ceremony at Gandhi Thidal on Beach Road at 12 noon. Puducherry Lt Governor Kiren Bedi will administer the oath of office and secrecy to Mr Narayanasamy and his cabinet colleagues.

The ministers in the new cabinet are Pradesh Committee Congress president V. Namassivayam, Malladi Krishna Rao, MOHF Shajahan, M. Kandasamy and R. Kamalakannan. Former chief minister V. Vaithilingam will be the Speaker of the new Assembly.

A host of Congress leaders, including former Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, AICC general secretaries Mukil Wasnik, BK Hariprasad and Chinnayya Reddy are expected to take part in the function. DMK leader and the leader of Opposition in Tamil Nadu assembly M.K. Stalin will also participate.

It took about 18 days after election results were announced for the formation of the new government. Though the Congress DMK front which won 17 seats was having a comfortable majority to form the government, the power struggle within the Congress, delayed the formation of the ministry. Even after the selection of V Narayanasamy as the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader, the struggle for ministerial berths continued.

The problems were solved only after the intervention of Congress High Command and the party president Sonia Gandhi. Arrangements for the swearing-in are in full swing. Unlike in the past when the swearing-in function used to be organised at Raj Nivas, the decision to hold the function at an open stage on the Beach Road for the first time seemed to double the energy of party workers.