The 40-day-old Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government of Maharashtra undertook its first expansion with the induction of 18 Cabinet ministers, which included the who’s who from the rebel Shiv Sena faction and the BJP.
Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari administered oath of office and secrecy to nine ministers of the Shinde-camp and nine from BJP.
Not a single woman was given a seat in the ministry.
However, Shinde said that this is just the first expansion. “Ours is an all-inclusive government and everyone would be given representation,” Shinde said amid criticism from the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi.
All those sworn in are MLAs and not a single MLC was accommodated in the ministry.
Though the Cabinet has been divided into a 50:50 ratio between Shinde-camp and BJP, what will be more crucial is the allocation of key portfolios.
Ministers from the BJP include Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil (Shirdi), Sudhir Mungantiwar (Chandrapur), Chandrakant Patil (Kothrud), Dr Vijaykumar Gavit (Nandurbar), Girish Mahajan (Jamner), Suresh Khade (Miraj), Ravindra Chavan (Dombivli), Atul Save (Aurangabad East) and Mangalprabhat Lodha (Malabar Hill).
The ministers from the Shinde-camp are Gulabrao Patil (Jalgaon Rural), Dada Bhuse (Malegaon Outer), Sanjay Rathod (Digras), Sandipan Bhumre (Paithan), Uday Samant (Ratnagiri), Prof Tanaji Sawant (Paranda), Abdul Sattar (Sillod), Deepak Kesarkar (Sawantwadi) and Shamburaj Desai (Patan).
Most of those sworn in are experienced hands and have served as ministers in important posts in the past.
The second expansion would be undertaken after the Supreme Court decides on a batch of petitions including the disqualification proceedings against Shinde.
The inclusion of Rathod and Sattar too sparked off a controversy.
Rathod had to resign from the previous Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government after his name figured in the controversy involving the death of a TikTok star Pooja Chavan. However Shinde said that he was given a clean chit during the previous government.
The names of two daughters of rebel Sattar have appeared among candidates who have been debarred by the Maharashtra State Council of Exam for their role in the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) scam. “Its a political conspiracy against me,” said Sattar.
In the first expansion that took the total tally of ministers to 20 including Shinde, Fadnavis the rebel Shiv Sena faction and BJP had accommodated leaders from all regions - Mumbai-Konkan, Western Maharashtra, North Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha.