Lagatar24 Desk
Mumbai, Aug 9: At a grand ceremony held today in Mumbai, 18 MLAs, 9 from the BJP and 9 from the Shiv Sena group headed by the chief minister Eknath Shinde were sworn in as ministers. This eagerly awaited cabinet enlargement came 40 days after the Uddhav Thackeray-led government was overthrown by a mutiny by the Sena party led by Shinde.
Chandrakant Patil and Vijay Kumar Gavit are among the nine BJP leaders who are taking oath as ministers in Maharashtra Cabinet at Raj Bhavan in Mumbai pic.twitter.com/DCyzwjEVVa
— ANI (@ANI) August 9, 2022
Before the event this morning, Chief Minister Shinde had a meeting with MLAs from his side. 40 of the 55 Sena MLAs supported him.
After Shinde was sworn in as chief minister and Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP was appointed as his deputy in June, the opposition criticised the time it took for the expansion of cabinet.
ALSO READ: Noida police arrest Shrikant Tyagi from Meerut
Shinde and the BJP leadership met several times prior to the expansion of the cabinet. The chief minister took many flights to Delhi to discuss the names of potential candidates with Amit Shah, the union’s minister of housing, among others.
The final list demonstrates a delicate balancing act between compensating Sena MLAs for their mutiny against the leadership of Uddhav Thackeray and ensuring there is no animosity in the BJP ranks either.
Chandrakant Patil, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Girish Mahajan, Suresh Khade, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Ravindra Chavhan, Mangal Prabhat Lodha, Vijaykumar Gavit, and Atul Save are among the BJP MLAs that received cabinet positions.
Dada Bhuse, Sandeepan Bhumre, Uday Samant, Tanaji Sawant, Abdul Sattar, Deepak Kesarkar, Gulabrao Patil, Sanjay Rathod, and Shambhuraje Desai were from the Sena camp.
