As expected, the all-important finance portfolio has gone to Yashwant Sinha, while home, defence, and external affairs are retained by LK Advani, George Fernandes and Jaswant Singh respectively.

According to a late evening announcement, Mamata Banerjee has been made railway minister, while Arun Jaitley becomes the information and broadcasting minister (independent charge). Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi is the new minister for heavy industry and public enterprises.

Vajpayee's man Friday Pramod Mahajan has been given parliamentary affairs with water resources as additional charge. Ram Jethmalani retains law, justice and company affairs.

The DMK's Murasoli Maran becomes the new commerce minister, while petroleum goes to Ram Naik. The new telecom minister is Ram Vilas Paswan, while his colleague Sharad Yadav takes the high-flying civil-aviation ministry. Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Sunderlal Patwa has been given rural development. Former civil-aviation minister Ananth Kumar goes to the department of youth affairs and sports with Cabinet rank.

The BJP's Uma Bharti gets tourism, while Suresh Prabhu (Shiv Sena) has been given the chemicals and fertilizer ministry. Former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Shanta Kumar will be in charge of consumer affairs and public distribution.

In all, Vajpayee has inducted 26 Cabinet ministers, seven ministers of state with independent charge, and 37 ministers of state. This has been done to accommodate maximum number of parties in the Government.

Home minister LK Advani, talking to reporters at the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan, justified the size of the ministry saying the maximum permissible size of any ministry was kept at 11 per cent of the membership of parliament by an expert parliamentary committee some years ago. The Government has not crossed the limit, he said.

In his brief chat with reporters, Vajpayee defended his jumbo-size ministry saying he wanted to accommodate all the coalition constituents and treat them as equals.

He said his Government would be stable, though it would have been better if the 29-member TDP group too had joined it. Vajpayee hinted he had discussed it with Chandrababu Naidu, who put forth his own views. He, however, did not spell out the TDP leader's views on the matter. The Prime Minister said he was sure of the TDP's strong support to his Government.

Ramakrishna Hegde, who headed the commerce ministry and Sikander Bakht, industry minister in the previous Government, have been dropped. Hegde has apparently been sacrificed as he proved to be a disaster in his home state of Karnataka by bringing the JD(U) into the NDA fold. Bakht, according to party sources, is likely to get a gubernatorial assignment.

The BJP has got the lion's share in the ministry (46), followed by the JD(U) (6), Shiv Sena and DMK (three each), BJD, MDMK, PMK and Trinamool Congress (two each), National Conference (one), Manipur Congress (one) and independents (two).

All states, except Punjab and the north eastern states of Sikkim, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Mizoram, and Nagaland, are represented in the council of ministers.

Among the Cabinet ministers, the BJP tops the list with 15, while the JD(U) has five, and the DMK two.

Hardly had the Government announced the portfolios when rumblings of protest started surfacing. The JD(U) leaders of Bihar, for example, alleged that certain castes from the state were not represented. They even went to the extent of accusing George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar of betraying them.