Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar was sworn in on Monday for a record fourth time as the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra in the expanded Cabinet of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.
Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari administered the oath of office to 25 Cabinet Ministers and 10 Ministers of State (MoS) along with the 60-year-old Mr. Pawar, who was earlier dubbed a proverbial ‘trojan horse’ for crossing over to the BJP side and effecting an overnight coup that barely lasted 80 hours. In a dramatic turn of events, Mr. Pawar handed over his resignation to then Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, resulting in the fall of the BJP-led government on November 26, 2019. Mr. Pawar, a nephew of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, had been inducted as Deputy Chief Minister in November 2010, October 2012 and November, 2019.
The long-pending expansion of the MVA government took place with the surprise inclusion of Aaditya Thackeray, first-time MLA from Worli and grandson of Sena patriarch Balsaheb Thackeray. He is the first member of his family to have jumped into active electoral politics in this Assembly polls.
The Sena inducted 12 Ministers (eight Cabinet and four MoS), while the NCP took 13 Ministers, with nine Cabinet and four MoS. The Congress has 10 Ministers (eight Cabinet and two MoS). The Cabinet can have 43 ministerial berths, including a Chief Minister, since the size of the Council of Ministers should be 15% of the strength of the Assembly, which has 288 members.
Other senior leaders who took the oath included former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan; former Cabinet Ministers and NCP’s Dilip Walse Patil, Rajesh Tope and Nawab Mailk; and Congress’s Varsha Gaikwad and Satej Patil.
The Uddhav Thackeray Cabinet now has four Muslim Ministers, including, Mr. Malik, Hasan Mushrif, Aslam Sheikh and Abdul Sattar. The gender representation remained inadequate with just three women Ministers taking oath, and skewed regional representation too had upset many.
The swearing-in at the Vidhan Bhavan in South Mumbai was not without any drama: Governor Koshyari protested to Mr. Sharad Pawar and senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge about the deviation from oath by as many as three ministers of their parties. When K.C. Padavi, a six-term Congress MLA from the Akkalkuwa-Akrani constituency started profusely thanking the voters for making him a Minister, the Governor started refused to administer the oath until the Minister repeated it again with corrections. Mr. Koshyari then gestured to Mr. Pawar and told Mr. Padavi, “This is no way to take the oath, please ask seniors here like Mr. Sharad Pawar and Mr. Kharge, they will guide you.”
Senior Sena leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut remained absent, reportedly upset over his brother Sunil Raut not being allotted a ministerial berth.
Several allies of the Sena too were missing after the party allotted berths to three independents.
