Jaya, 28 Ministers to be sworn in tomorrow

Chennai, May 22

All India Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK) supremo Jayalalithaa will be sworn in as Tamil Nadu chief minister for the fifth time on Saturday, nearly eight months after she was forced to quit after her conviction in a disproportionate assets case. Twenty-eight other ministers will take their oaths with the leader.

On Monday, 67-year-old Jayalalithaa was unanimously elected legislature party leader at a meeting amid thunderous applause. Following her election to the position, which comes 11 days after she was acquitted by the Karnataka High Court in a disproportionate assets case, O Paneerselvam resigned from his current position of Chief Minister on Friday morning.

Jayalalithaa will be sworn in 11 am at the Madras University Centenary Auditorium.

Her new Cabinet will see her old team return — trusted aide O Panneerselvam as Minister of Finance, Natham R Viswanathan as Electricity Minister and R Vaithilingam as Housing Minister as well as Edappadi K Palaniswami and P Mohan. She also largely retained Paneerselvam’s cabinet: only three serving Ministers — MSM Anandan, who was the Forest Minister in Panneerselvam Cabinet ; Chendur Pandian, who did not have a portfolio in the Panneerselvam Cabinet and is currently ill; and Agri Krishnamurthy, who was arrested in a suicide case in which an official took his life — were kept out of the official list of Ministers released by Raj Bhavan.

Jayalalithaa will hold the portfolios of home, police, public, all India services, general administration and district revenue officers.

"The Governor (K Rosiah) has approved the recommendation made by Selvi J Jayalalithaa, Chief Minister-Designate regarding allocation of portfolios among the Council of Ministers," an official Raj Bhavan release said here.

Edappadi K Palaniswami, who was Minister for Highways and Minor Ports in the outgoing Cabinet, will now also be given Forest. 

After her meeting, she went to pay floral tributes to leaders including party founder and Jayalalithaa’s mentor MG Ramachandran, CN Annadurai and EV Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar.

After the meeting, a beaming Cooperative Minister, Sellur K Raju, said: "This is the happiest day of our life."

Rebel MLAs of the opposition DMDK, including R Sundarrajan, Tamil Azhagan, K Pandiarajan, and R Santhi, also attended the meeting.

Jayalalithaa was disqualified following her conviction in the Rs 66.66 crore disproportionate assets case on September 27.

O Paneerselvam has take over from Jayalalithaa in once before — when the AIADMK supremo was convicted in the TANSI properties’ case in 2001 — but stepped down six months later when she was acquitted six months later. — PTI