Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday expanded his cabinet where 33 elected MLAs of Mahayuti were given the oath of cabinet ministers while six MLAs as minister for state.
Maharashtra governor CP Radhakrishnan administered the oath to a total 39 ministers at Raj Bhavan in Nagpur on the eve of Maharashtra state assembly’s winter session.
Of the sworn-in ministers, 19 are from BJP which includes 16 cabinet ministers and three ministers for state. Eleven are from Shiv Sena which includes nine cabinet ministers and two ministers for state sworn as ministers while nine are from NCP where eight are cabinet ministers and one is a minister for state.
In total, BJP gets 20 ministerial berths including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, while Shiv Sena gets 12 including Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and NCP gets eleven including Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
So, a total of 43 minister’s quota as per the strength of ministries against 288 members of the state assembly gets filled by this cabinet expansion in the new Mahayuti government.
Interestingly, in this cabinet expansion, earlier 2.5 years Eknath Shinde led government’s 12 ministers were dropped and new faces were given the opportunity.
The dropped names include senior BJP leader Sudhir Mungantiwar, BJP leader Vijay Kumar Gavit, and BJP leader Ravindra Chavan, while NCP dropped the senior most NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal, former home minister Dilip Walse Patil, Anil Patil, Darmabab Atram while Eknath Shinde led Shiv Sena denied the ministries to former medical education minister Tanaji Sawant, former education minister Deepak Kesarkar etc.
In this cabinet expansion, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has given opportunity to new and young faces plus he also included some of the old and experienced faces to balance the age and experience of his ministry.
On the other hand, DCM Ajit Pawar took the bold step of denying ministry to senior most leaders of NCP like Chhagan Bhujbal and Dilip Walse Patil and included more young and loyalist faces in the new cabinet.
Moreover, DCM Eknath Shinde inducted the new faces who were denied the opportunity in his last 2.5 years of government. Shinde had a tough task to keep each one happy in a limited space. As a result, one of the Shiv Sena’s MLAs Ramesh Bondekar resigned as Shiv Sena deputy leader after denial of ministry in the new cabinet.
Senior BJP leader said that the new cabinet tried to keep the balance of caste, and regional balance. “In this election, each section of the society voted for us, therefore we wanted to give representatives to each section even if the faces from these societies were new,” he said, requesting anonymity.
"This is a new team under new leadership and we are hopeful that they will perform better,” he added.
The ministers who took oath as ministers and minister for state
1. Chandrashekhar Bawankule (BJP)
2. Radhakrishna Vikhepatil (BJP)
3. Hasan Mushrif (NCP)
4. Chandrakant Patil (BJP)
5. Girish Mahajan (BJP)
6. Gulabrao Patil (Shiv Sena)
7. Ganesh Naik (BJP)
8. Dada Bhuse (Shiv Sena)
9. Sanjay Rathod (Shiv Sena)
10. Dhananjay Munde (NCP)
11. Mangalprabhat Lodha (BJP)
12. Uday Samant (Shiv Sena)
13. Jaykumar Rawal (BJP)
14. Pankaja Munde (BJP)
15. Atul Save (BJP)
16. Ashok Uike (BJP)
17. Shambhuraj Desai (Shiv Sena)
18. Ashish Shelar (BJP)
19. Datta Bharane (NCP)
20. Aditi Tatkare (NCP)
21. Shivendrasinh Bhosale (BJP)
22. Manikrao Kokate (NCP)
23. Jaykumar Gore (BJP)
24. Narahari Jirwal (NCP)
25. Sanjay Savkare (BJP)
26. Sanjay Shirsat (Shiv Sena)
27. Pratap Sarnaik (Shiv Sena)
28. Bharat Gogavale (Shiv Sena)
29. Makarand Patil (NCP)
30. Nitesh Rane (BJP)
31. Akash Fundkar (BJP)
32. Babasaheb Patil (NCP)
33. Prakash Abitkar (Shiv Sena)
Ministers of State
1. Madhuri Misal (BJP)
2. Ashish Jaiswal (Shiv Sena)
3. Pankaj Bhoyar (BJP)
4. Meghna Bordikar Sakore (BJP)
5. Indranil Naik (NCP)
6. Yogesh Kadam (Shiv Sena)