Eight new faces in Team Manmohan

New Delhi, June 17 : Eight new faces were inducted in the Council of Ministers in the Manmohan Singh government on Monday.

Sisram Ola and Oscar Fernandes make a comeback after a gap of four years. Ola, along with Girija Vyas and Kavuri Sambasiva Rao were inducted as Cabinet Ministers.

Ola and Fernandes were ministers in the UPA-I but did not find a place in the UPA-II government.

The new inducted Minister of State are Manikrao Gavit, Santosh Chowdhury, JD Seelam and ENS Nachiappan.

All the eight new faces are sworn in on Monday at Rashtrapati Bhavan and the President Pranab Mukherjee administered the oath of the office.

This is the second re-shuffle since October and most probably the last before general election in 2014. With the new inductions, the strength of the Council of Ministers will go up to 77.

The expansion-cum-reshuffle of the Council of Ministers has been necessitated by the exit of ministers from DMK as well as resignation of Pawan Kumar Bansal, Ashwani Kumar, Ajay Maken and CP Joshi. INN