Chennai: Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin, the DMK president who led his party to a huge victory in the Assembly polls, was sworn in as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu on Friday.
Governor Banwarilal Purohit administered the oath of office and secrecy to the 68-year-old Stalin, for whom this would be the first stint as chief minister, in a simple ceremony at the Raj Bhavan here.
A total of 33 ministers were also sworn in, of whom 15 are first-time ministers. All the 34, including Stalin, took the oath ‘as per their conscience’ and in Tamil, in sync with the decades old tradition of the DMK.
Earlier, Stalin, clad in a white shirt and dhoti introduced his Cabinet to Purohit.
DMK veteran and general secretary Duraimurugan, who had held portfolios like Public Works during the previous DMK rule (2006-11) was administered oath after Stalin and is designated as Water Resources Minister in charge of irrigation projects and has portfolios of mines and minerals.
Home and other portfolios including public, general administration, all India services, district revenue officers, special programme implementation and welfare of differently abled persons are with Chief Minister Stalin.
Palanivel Thiagarajan, a former investment banker, is Minister for Finance and Human Resources Management.
New measures announced
Stalin on Friday ordered payment of Rs 2,000 as first instalment to all ration card holders eligible to get rice as coronavirus impact relief.
The DMK party had promised in its poll manifesto payment of Rs 4,000 as relief for poor as coronavirus has affected the people.
About 20 million ration card holders will be benefited from the scheme involving an outlay of Rs41 billion.
Similarly as a part of fulfilling the party’s poll promises Stalin also ordered:-
-Reduction of milk price by Rs 3 per litre from May 16 onwards.
-Free travel for women from Saturday onwards in ordinary state government run buses. The government will pay Rs10 billion to the transport corporations as subsidy.
-State government to pay COVID-19 treatment costs incurred in private hospitals under Chief Minister’s Health Insurance Scheme and
-Formation of a new department to process and solve the issues petitioned by the people. Stalin had collected the petitions promising that within 100 days the issues would be solved.
