AJIT PAWAR BACK AS DEPUTY CM
14 ministers from the NCP, 10 from the Congress and 12 from the Shiv Sena administered the oath
MUMBAI : Senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar took oath as Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister on Monday as 35 others, including chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s son Aaditya, were inducted in the council of ministers that boasted of several heavyweights from all three coalition partners.
MUMBAI: Senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar took oath as Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister on Monday as 35 others, including chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s son Aaditya, were inducted in the council of ministers that boasted of several heavyweights from all three coalition partners.
Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari administered the oath to 14 ministers from NCP, 10 from the Congress and 12 from the Shiv Sena at the Vidhan Bhavan premises in south Mumbai. Twenty six of the 36 were sworn in as cabinet ministers and the rest as ministers of state.
Three women ministers and four Muslims were included in the council that was dominated by the Maratha community that makes up roughly a third of the state’s population. Portfolios are likely to be announced in a couple of days. The ceremony, which came roughly a month after the three-party Maharashrta Vikas Aghadi government took charge, marked the first time that a father-son duo will work together in the Maharashtra cabinet. Aaditya, 29, was also the first elected legislator from the powerful Thackeray family. “Whatever responsibility I am given, I will be happy to do justice... There are various challenges ahead of us from farmers issues to unemployment among the youth and we will try to resolve them,” he said.
Pawar, nephew of NCP chief Sharad Pawar, completed a remarkable comeback roughly a month after breaking ranks with his party and taking oath as deputy to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Devendra Fadnavis. “This government now has full strength of 43 ministers. Once the portfolios are distributed by all three party chiefs, we can start working in earnest,’’ he said.
Senior Sena leader Sanjay Raut and the BJP skipped the ceremony. Raut denied any disagreement and said he had done his job without expecting anything in return. “We have limitations since it is a government of three parties ,” Thackeray said, when asked about the issue.
Thackeray’s cabinet now includes several high-profile leaders such as former chief minister Ashok Chavan (Congress), former deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal (NCP) as well as the likes of Balasaheb Thorat (Congress), Anil Deshmukh (NCP), Jayant Patil (NCP) and Dilip Walse Patil (NCP) .
Former CM Prithviraj Chavan didn’t find a place in the cabinet.
The three women include the Congress’ Varsha Gaikwad (Mumbai) and Yashomati Thakur (Vidarbha) and Aditi Tatkare (Konkan) from the NCP. The four Muslim ministers include two from NCP, Nawab Malik (Mumbai) and Hasan Mushariff (Kolhapur); one from Congress, Aslam Shaikh (Mumbai) and one from Shiv Sena, Abdul Sattar (Marathwada). The new council has a majority of Maratha leaders (19) followed by Other Backward Classes (7), Dalits (3) and one tribal leader. The sugar belt of Western Maharashtra, seen as Congress-NCP bastion, got 13 ministerial berths followed by eight from Vidarbha and seven ministers from Marathwada, four ministers from North Maharashtra and two from Konkan.
“The ministers from NCP and Congress are experienced and the cabinet has several heavyweights. The challenge before Thackeray will be to pick up the right bureaucrats in the chief minister’s office, who will help him to drive his agenda. Otherwise he might get overshadowed by his more experienced allies,’’ said Surendra Jondhale, a political analyst.
› There are various challenges ahead of us from farmers issues to unemployment among the youth and we will try to resolve them. AADITYA THACKERAY, Sena minister