NEW DELHI: The Maharashtra cabinet was sworn in on Sunday in the presence of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and his deputies Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar. Governor CP Radhakrishnan administered oath to the ministers at Raj Bhavan in Nagpur.
The swearing-in of the state cabinet in Nagpur, which comes a day before the winter session of the legislature, marks a rare occasion as the last such ceremony in Nagpur happened in 1991, when the then governor C Subramaniam administered oath to Chhagan Bhujbal and other ministers.
The portfolio allocation to the ministers is expected to wrap up soon as the parties have just one day to ascertain the roles of the MLAs before the session kicks off.
Here’s the list of cabinet ministers
- Chandrashekhar Bawankule, BJP’s state president, was the first to be sworn in as cabinet minister. He is an MLA from the Kamthi assembly constituency in the Nagpur district.
- Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil of the BJP took oath as minister after Bawankule. He is in his 8th term as MLA from Shirdi. Patil was earlier with the Congress, Shiv Sena and now BJP. In the Shinde government, he was the revenue minister.
- Hasan Mushrif of the NCP took oath as minister. He is the fourth term as MLA from the Kagal in Kolhapur district.
- Chandrakant Patil of the BJP took oath as minister. He is in his second term as MLA from Kothrud in the Pune district. He was MLC in 2014 and was revenue and public works minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government. Patil was also Maharashtra BJP chief from 2019-2022.
- BJP’s Girish Mahajan will also be part of the Fadnavis’s cabinet. He has been elected seven times consecutively as MLA from Jamner in Jalgaon district. He is known to be a close confidant of Fadnavis.
- Shiv Sena’s Gulabrao Patil will be the part of Maharashtra cabinet. He went with Eknath Shinde when the Shiv Sena was split. He is in his fifth term as MLA from the Jalgaon Rural assembly constituency.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the ceremony, which also saw Ajit Pawar from the NCP and former CM Eknath Shinde from Shiv Sena taking oath as deputy chief ministers.
The prolonged deliberations over portfolio allocations and last-minute Cabinet swearing-in could be attributed to Mahayuti’s challenges in balancing power with Shiv Sena and NCP factions, both eager to secure influential roles in the government.
In the state polls, the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance secured a decisive victory, winning 235 seats. The BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 132 seats, while Shiv Sena won 57 and NCP secured 41 seats. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance faced a major setback, with Congress winning just 16 seats, Shiv Sena (UBT) securing 20, and the NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) claiming only 10 seats.