After being sworn in by President Bidya Devi Bhandari late on Tuesday, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba formed a small Cabinet inducting two leaders each from Nepali Congress and CPN- Maoist Centre.
The president administered the oath of office and secrecy to newly appointed Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand, Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Pampha Bhusal and Finance Minister Janardan Sharma yesterday itself.
This is the fifth time Deuba has become Prime Minister of Nepal.
Earlier, he served in the top executive post from September 1995 to March 1997, from August 2001 to October 2002, from June 2004 to February 2005 and from June 2017 to February 2018.
Here is a brief introduction of the newly inducted ministers:
Balkrishna Khand has been appointed as the Minister for Home Affairs. He has become a minister for the fourth time. He was the Minister of State for Education and Sports in 2009. In 2016, he was appointed the Minister of Defense. He is currently the chief whip of the Nepali Congress parliamentary party.
Khand, a resident of Tilottama-8, Rupandehi, has completed bachelor-levels. He started politics from the Nepal Students Union, a student organization of the Nepali Congress, in 1976. In 1987, he became the president of the Nepal Student Union. In 1997, he became the president of Nepal Tarun Dal. He became a member of the Congress Central Committee from 1999. Elected from Rupandehi-3 in 2007 and 2013, he was made a proportional lawmaker in the House of Representatives by the party in 2017.
CPN-Maoist leader Pampha Bhusal has been given the responsibility as Minister of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation. She became the Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare in 2007, Minister for Federal Affairs and General Administration in 2008 and Minister for Peace and Reconstruction in 2011.
She has a master’s degree in terms of education level. Elected from Lalitpur-3, she entered party politics in 1980 BS from the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN). In 1989, she became a member of the Regional Bureau in the CPN. She is the first female central member of the CPN-Maoist. She was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly from Lalitpur-3 in 2007. She was last elected as a member of the House of Representatives in 2017.
Janardhan Sharma, who has been the Minister for Peace and Reconstruction, Minister for Energy and Minister for Home Affairs, is now the new Minister for Finance. After being elected a member of the Constituent Assembly, he was the Minister of Peace and Reconstruction in 2008. He became the Minister for Energy in 2016 and Minister for Home Affairs in 2017.
He is a member of the Army Integration Special Committee. Sharma was elected from Musikot-5, Rukum West. Sharma, who started politics from the party unit committee in 1977, became a central member of the then CPN-Maoist in 1999. In 2000, he became a member of the People’s Liberation Army and in 2003, a member of the Standing Committee of the CPN-Maoist.
Sharma, a member of the Interim Legislature and a member of the Constituent Assembly, was elected a member of the House of Representatives in 2017.
Gyanendra Bahadur Karki of Deurali Gairigaun, Bhojpur is a loyal party member for Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba. He has experience as the Minister of Water Resources and Minister of Finance.
He became the State Minister for Water Resources in the Girija Prasad Koirala government in 2006. Breaking the tradition of the Nepali Congress to hand over the responsibility of the Ministry of Finance only to the leader who understands economic issues, Sher Bahadur Deuba had made him the Minister for Finance in 2017. He studied up to post-graduate level and started politics after joining the Nepal Students Union in 1970.
He became a central member of the Nepali Congress since 2001. He also became the Bhojpur president of the Nepali Congress.
