Mumbai: Ten days after Devendra Fadnavis took oath as Maharashtra chief minister along with Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar as his deputies, the Mahayuti government Sunday expanded its cabinet, dropping several seasoned ministers and inducting many new faces, including first-time ministers, in their place.
The Fadnavis government inducted 39 new ministers in the cabinet Sunday at Nagpur’s Raj Bhavan, a day before the winter session of the state assembly is scheduled to begin. Of the 39, 19 are from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 11 from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and nine from the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
Governor C. P. Radhakrishnan administered the oath to 33 cabinet ministers and six ministers of state.
Speaking to cadres Sunday, deputy CM Ajit Pawar said, “We have discussed rotating cabinet berths for 2.5 years. By and large, all three parties are in agreement about this. This will ensure all districts get represented.”
The three parties have dropped 11 ministers from the previous Shinde-led Mahayuti government. The list includes several heavyweights such as NCP’s Chhagan Bhujbal and Dilip Walse Patil, Shiv Sena’s Deepak Kesarkar, Tanaji Sawant and Abdul Sattar, and the BJP’s Sudhir Mungantiwar, Ravindra Chavan, and Vijaykumar Gavit.
The freshly inducted ministers include several new faces with there being 19 leaders who have had no prior experience as ministers.
At least two sources close to the leadership—one from the NCP and the other from the Shiv Sena—said the decision to drop ministers was based on two criteria, non-performance and controversies.
The NCP leader said, “The BJP leadership in Delhi had requested all three parties to evaluate the list of ministers. Those who have created unnecessary controversies with their statements, and who have also not been able to convert the work in their departments into votes were to be given the sack.”
Moreover, the leader added, deputy CM Ajit Pawar wanted to ensure that he creates a fresh rung of leadership within the party. “He didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of his uncle Sharad Pawar who kept the party’s power in the hands of a few senior leaders and failed to create a second rung of leadership.”
The cabinet expansion was delayed as Shinde was bargaining hard for certain portfolios after he agreed to give up the CM’s post, making way for Fadnavis. The three parties also took time to firm up their lists of ministers with there being multiple aspirants.
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Heavyweights dropped
Mahayuti sources said that Bhujbal, though a strong leader from the Other Backward Classes (OBC), had stirred trouble for the Mahayuti government by leading OBC protests to oppose his own government’s decision of giving eligible persons from the Maratha community reservation as Kunbis from the OBC quota.
“Bhujbal was in charge of an important department as food and civil supplies minister. The Shiv Bhojan scheme had a lot of potential to be played up and convert its beneficiaries into Mahayuti voters. But he didn’t do enough is what the leadership’s opinion is,” a second NCP leader who did not wish to be named said.
The Shiv Bhojan scheme, which involves giving full meals at a highly subsidised cost, was the brainchild of the Uddhav Thackeray-led undivided Shiv Sena, and was introduced when the Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was in power.
The NCP leader said that, on the other hand, a minister like Aditi Tatkare, who was in charge of the women and child development department, very efficiently implemented the flagship ‘Ladki Bahin’ scheme, which was introduced in the run-up to the assembly poll in July this year.
Under the ‘Ladki Bahin’ scheme, which is credited to be one of the factors that won the Mahayuti government this election, women in the age group of 21 to 65 years with an annual family income of less than Rs 2.5 lakh get Rs 1,500 per month.
Walse Patil too, leaders said, had recorded a tepid performance, and while he won from his constituency, Ambegaon, which he has represented since 1999, the winning margin was very slim at 1,523 votes.
The NCP has also dropped ministers such as Dharmaraj Atram, Sanjay Bansode and Anil Patil.
The Shinde-led Shiv Sena has dropped Tanaji Sawant, Abdul Sattar and Deepak Kesarkar, all of whom had gotten involved in controversies in one way or the other.
Sawant had criticised the Mahayuti by making a statement about how he feels like throwing up after cabinet meetings for having to sit next to NCP ministers.
Sattar, who is the Shinde-led Shiv Sena’s only Muslim MLAs, has often ruffled feathers due to his outspoken demeanour. This time, in his constituency of Sillod, local BJP functionaries had refused to campaign for him, saying he did not do enough for BJP’s Raosaheb Danve during the Lok Sabha election, resulting in Danve’s defeat.
Kesarkar, who hails from Sindhudurg, had drawn flak for the collapse of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue at the Rajkot Fort in the district in August this year. Further, his statement about the incident being “sad”, but how “good things” will come now, also reflected poorly on the Mahayuti government with the rival MVA asking for Kesarkar’s resignation.
The BJP decided to drop Mungantiwar, who had lost the Lok Sabha election from Chandrapur to Congress though he guarded his fort of Ballarpur in Chandrapur district in the assembly election last month.
Ravindra Chavan, who has also been dropped, is likely to be given the post of BJP state president, with the incumbent president Chandrashekhar Bawankule being included in the cabinet this time.
Some new, some old
Fadnavis has brought back some ministers who were part of his cabinet during his first stint as CM such as Pankaja Munde, Jaykumar Rawal and Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Ashish Shelar and Ashok Uike. The CM has retained five ministers from the previous Shinde-led Mahayuti government. These are Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Chandrakant Patil, Girish Mahajan, Mangal Prabhat Lodha and Atul Save.
The BJP has also inducted eight first-time ministers in the cabinet. These include former CM Narayan Rane’s son Nitesh Rane from Sindhudurg, Madhuri Misal from Pune, Jaykumar Gore and Shivendraraje Bhosale from the Satara district, Meghna Bordikar from Parbhani, Pankaj Bhoyar from Wardha, Aakash Phundkar from Buldhana, and Sanjay Savkare from Jalgaon.
Bhosale is a descendant of Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji, while Nitesh Rane has been a very vocal flagbearer of the BJP’s Hindutva agenda.
The BJP has also inducted Ganesh Naik, MLA from Airoli in Navi Mumbai, who has had ministerial experience when he was with the undivided NCP.
From the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, of the 11 MLAs who took oath as ministers, six are new. The party has tried to accommodate the senior MLAs who were hopeful of being made ministers during Shinde’s tenure as CM. These include leaders such as Sanjay Shirsat from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district and Bharat Gogawale from Raigad district.
Other new faces include senior leader Ramdas Kadam’s son Yogesh Kadam from Ratnagiri district, Pratap Sarnaik from Thane, Ashish Jaiswal from Ramtek, and Prakash Abitkar from Kolhapur district.
From the NCP, the party has retained four of its old ministers—Aditi Tatkare, Hasan Mushrif and Dhananjay Munde. It has brought in new faces such as Narhari Zirwal, Manikrao Kokate from Nashik district, Dattatray Bharne from Indapur in Pune district, Makrand Patil from Satara district, Babasaheb Patil from Latur district, and Indraneel Naik from Yavatmal. Indraneel Naik is the nephew of former Maharashtra CM Sudhakarrao Naik.
With the exception of Bharne, none of the other new faces have had prior ministerial experience.
The six leaders to take oath as ministers of state are BJP’s Madhuri Misal, Pankaj Bhoyar and Meghna Bordikar, Shiv Sena’s Ashish Jaiswal and Yogesh Kadam, and the NCP’s Indraneel Naik.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
