Raipur: In the new Chhattisgarh cabinet, all the 12 newly inducted ministers are crorepatis. The average assets of the ministers are worth Rs 47.13 crores.
This was revealed by an analysis of the Chhattisgarh Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) of self-sworn affidavits filed by them during elections.
The earlier cabinet had 11 multimillionaire ministers out of the total 12. In the 2008 cabinet, only 4 ministers were the crorepatis, out of the total 13.
The richest among all the ministers is Congress’s TS Baba from Ambikapur constituency, with declared assets worth Rs 500.01 crores, while Kawasi Lakhma from Konta constituency has the lowest declared assets worth Rs 1.9 crore.
The average assets of Rs 47.13 crore of the 12 ministers is a major jump from average assets of Rs 3.04 crore and Rs 0.81 crore in 2013 and 2008, respectively. This is, however, because of TS Baba’s Rs 500.01 crore of assets and Chief Minister Bhupesh Kumar Baghel’s assets of Rs 21.5 crore being outliers. Rest of the 10 ministers have declared assets worth below Rs 8 crore.
Chief minister Bhupesh Baghel has criminal cases filed against him under several charges including ‘voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty (IPC Section 332)’, ‘criminal conspiracy (IPC Section 120B)’ and ‘rioting (IPC Section-147)’ among others.
In terms of education, 2 out of the 12 ministers have declared their qualification as 12th pass, while 9 ministers have marked themselves as graduate or above. One minister has identified himself as just literate.
The new cabinet has only one woman minister, much like the cabinets in 2008 and 2013.
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