Edapaddi Palanisamy is new TN CM; allots portfolios, keeps Home, Finance
Chennai: Edapaddi K Palanisamy, who took office as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister on Thursday, will hold the important Home and Finance portfolios, which were earlier held by his predecessor O Panneerselvam.
Besides, the new Chief Minister will also take care of other key portfolios of Public Works, Highways and Minor Ports, which he had managed as a minister in the Jayalalithaa and Panneerselvam cabinets.
The Chief Minister allotted the following portfolios to his Cabinet Ministers: C Srinivasan (Forests), K A Sengottaiyan (School Education), K Raju (Cooperation), P
Thangamani (Electricity), S P Velumani (Municipal Administration), D Jayakumar (Fisheries) and C Ve Shanmugam (Law).
K P Anbalagan will look after Higher Education, V Saroja (Social Welfare), M C Sampath (Industries), K C Karuppannan (Environment), R Kamaraj (Food), O S Manian (Handloom), K Radhakrishnan (Housing), C Vijaya Baskar (Health and Family Welfare), R Dorai Kannu (Agriculture), Kadambur Raju (Information), R B Udhayakumar(Revenue) and N Natarajan (Tourism).
K C Veeramani has been allotted Commercial Taxes, K T Rajenthira Balaji (Dairy Development), P Benjamin (Rural Industries), Nilofer Kafeel (Labor), M R Vijayabaskar (Transport), M Manikandan (Information Technology), V M Rajalakshmi (Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare), G Baskaran (Khadi and Village Industries Board) and S Ramachandran (HR and CE).
S Valarmathi has been given charge of Backward Classes and Minority Welfare department, while P Balakrishna Reddy will be the Animal Husbandry minister.
All the Ministers, barring Sengottaiyan, had handled the respective portfolios in the Panneerselvam cabinet too.
K Pandiarajan, now in the Panneerselvam camp, was School Education Minister in the previous cabinet.
AIADMK said all the party MLAs were working as a family and the focus will be on delivering good governance to the people of Tamil Nadu under the leadership of Palanisamy.
"Now, we have the party under the leadership of Edappadi K Palanisamy (as Chief Minister). We will focus on delivering good governance to the people of Tamil Nadu," Minister for Milk and Dairy Development, K T Rajendhira Balaji told a Tamil channel.
On the remarks by former Chief Minister O Panneerselvam that they would never allow a family, apparently referring to AIADMK General Secretary V K Sasikala to run the government, Balaji said, "No family is dominating us. We (the 124 legislators) all are united and working as a family."
Elaborating, he said, "all these days we were protecting the unity in the party. Now, we all are united and the focus will be on delivering good governance."
