New Delhi, June 4 -- The cabinet led by new Karnataka chief minister DK Shivakumar has the stamp of social engineering, featuring a mix of important castes and two minority faces - a Muslim and a Christian - but no women.

Nine of the 14 ministers who took oath on Wednesday were from southern Karnataka and five were from the northern part of the state. Shivakumar, who represents the Kanakapura assembly seat in the Bengaluru rural area, is a powerful leader of the Vokkaligas, a dominant community that has produced six CMs so far in the state.

The new cabinet, according to many leaders, has two Vokkaliga ministers and three ministers from the Lingayats, another dominant community in the state. There are three Dalit faces, two Kuruba leader...