In the long-awaited exercise, Patel included four ministers of state -- Amarnath Shetty, D Nagarajaiah, D Narayan Das and Ashwath Narayan Reddy -- and elevated the lone woman member Leeladevi R Prasad to cabinet rank.

Governor Khursheed Alam Khan administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers at a ceremony held on the lawns of Raj Bhavan.

Patel himself candidly admitted to reporters that he was `not happy' at the size of his ministry saying, ``there were too many political compulsions (for him)''.

``When Kalyan Singh could do it, why not I'', Patel quipped drawing himself a comparison with the Kalyan ministry in Uttar Pradesh in terms of the ministry strength.

The exercise had apparently been carried out to balance the caste equation in the ministry in favour ofVokkaligas -- barring Das who is from Scheduled Caste, three of the four new ministers are from that community.

Decks were cleared for Patel to carry out the exercise recently in Delhi, where Dal top leaders gave him a free hand for his expansion plans. Due to differences with former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, Patel had inducted only B L Shankar, in the January 31 expansion.

Earlier, Karnataka Minister of State for Horticulture D T Jayakumar today tendered resignation from his post expressing displeasure over his non-elevation as cabinet rank minister by Chief Minister Patel in today's ministry expansion.

In a letter to Patel, copies of which were released to the press here, Jayakumar said, he was resigning from the ministry as the Chief Minister had not kept up his promise of elevating him to cabinet rank.

Jayakumar in his letter stated ``you (Patel) had promised me that I would be promoted to cabinet rank, if anyone of the ministers of state was elevated''.

However, he regretted that theassurance was not honoured by Patel, probably due to political pressure. Later, Jayakumar told news persons that soon after the swearing in function of new ministers, he rushed to the private residence of Patel to hand over his resignation letter.

However, his personal staff informed him that the Chief Minister was resting and he handed over the resignation letter to one of the private secretaries of Patel.

Jayakumar said he was peeved at being ignored by Patel for elevation to the cabinet rank even on earlier occasions and was disappointed again when he was not considered for promotion.