Five weeks after he was sworn in as Maharashtra’s chief minister, Eknath Shinde expanded his cabinet to induct 18 new ministers on Tuesday.
The 18 MLAs, nine each from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena faction and alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party, were administered the oath as state cabinet ministers by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari at the Raj Bhawan in Mumbai.
The uncertainty that still hangs over Shinde’s ongoing fight in the Supreme Court over control of the Sena, and the delicate negotiation for berths that played out in Delhi in the presence of the BJP’s top leadership are said to have led to the delay in the cabinet expansion.
Shinde and Fadnavis made seven trips to Delhi to hammer out the first list of ministers.
The new BJP ministers are Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Chandrakant Patil, Vijaykumar Gavit, Girish Mahajan, Suresh Khade, Ravindra Chavan, Atul Save and Mangalprabhat Lodha. The BJP has a quota of 27 ministerial berths in the new government.
From the Shinde group, Gulabrao Patil, Dada Bhuse, Sanjay Rathod, Sandipan Bhumre, Uday Samant, Tanaji Sawant, Abdul Sattar, Deepak Kesarkar and Shambhuraj Desai were sworn in as ministers. The group has been given a quota of 16 ministerial berths.
Among the nine Sena MLAs were sworn in on Tuesday, seven were part of the Uddhav Thackeray government, which was toppled on June 29 after Shinde walked out effecting a vertical split in the Sena.
The portfolios will be announced after the expanded cabinet meets on Wednesday.
Tuesday’s exercise took the strength of the Maharashtra cabinet to 20, less than half the maximum allowed strength of 43.
There will be another ministry expansion soon, an aide of Shinde said.
The list of new ministers did not include any woman MLA, fanning a new controversy in the state, with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP Supriya Sule saying that the absence of women shows the “BJP’s mindset”.
“Maharashtra was the first state in the country to give the reservation for women. When 50 per cent of India’s population is women, they are not represented in the state cabinet. This shows the BJP’s mindset,” said Sule.
Former CM Fadnavis, however, said that women will get appropriate representation in the next round of cabinet expansion.
“The objection that there is no woman minister in the newly-formed cabinet will be addressed soon. Women members will be inducted in the next cabinet expansion for sure. Earlier, people were critical over (the delay) in expanding the cabinet government, now they have come up with something new. Women representatives will get appropriate representation in our cabinet,” Fadnavis said.
In the erstwhile Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government, Varsha Gaikwad, Yashomati Thakur, and Aditi Tatkare served as ministers.
The Shinde-Fadnavis government also faced flak for the inclusion of tainted legislator Sanjay Rathod.
Rathod, the forest minister in the Thackeray government, stepped down in February 2021 after the death by suicide of a 22-year-old woman in Pune who was also a Tik-Tok star. BJP had then levelled allegations of his involvement in the case.
Maharashtra BJP’s vice president Chitra Wagh, who ensured that the police file an FIR in the case, termed the development “unfortunate”. In a video message on social media, Wagh said, “Though he has become a minister, my fight against him will continue. I have full faith in the judiciary and I shall fight to win.”
Taking a swipe at the government, leader of opposition Ajit Pawar said it would have been better had Shinde and Fadnavis refrained from inducting a few tainted faces in the cabinet. “Many of our old cabinet colleagues have been inducted in the cabinet, which proves that the allegations levelled by the BJP (against the previous Thackeray government) were false,” he said.
CM Shinde, however, defended Rathod’s induction saying. “He was included only after he got a clean chit from previous Thackeray government. The case was investigated by the Pune police and the probe found no involvement of the minister in it. In spite of that if anybody has anything further to say about the matter, we are ready to consider that,” he told the media after the swearing in.
There were some murmurs of disaffection in the Shinde camp after Tuesday’s expansion, with most MLAs who rebelled against Thackeray eyeing ministerial berths.
Achalpur MLA Bacchu Kadu, who was a minister of state in the MVA regime and had thrown his lot with Shinde early into his rebellion, expressed his disappointment at being kept out. He said that Shinde had promised him a ministerial berth. “Everyone feels they must become ministers. So, some trace of disappointment is inevitable… if this is not done (making him a minister) akela Bacchu Kadu kafi hai (just Bacchu Kadu is enough),” he told the media on Tuesday.
Kadu’s party Prahaar Janashakti has two MLAs, including himself.
The other MVA minister who did not make the cut is Rajendra Patil Yadravkar, an independent MLA from Shirol in Kolhapur.
While CM Shinde worked hard to pacify disgruntled MLAs, Fadnavis’s imprint is clear in the choice of BJP ministers. His close confidantes Girish Mahajan, Ravindra Chavan, Atul Save, Suresh Khade have all found a place in the cabinet.
With BJP’s state and Mumbai unit chiefs Chandrakant Patil and Mangal Prabhat Lodha inducted in the cabinet, the party is expected to find their replacement shortly. “Ashish Shelar is likely to be made the Mumbai unit chief again, while Chandrashekhar Bawankule, an OBC leader, is expected to be appointed as head of the state unit,” a party leader said on condition of anonymity.
The cabinet expansion came 41 days after Shinde and Fadnavis were sworn in as CM and deputy CM on June 30, after a rebellion led by the former toppled the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government.
