At a ceremony in Nagpur on Sunday, important representatives of Maharashtra’s recently established ministry took the oath of office, expanding the cabinet. BJP leaders Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil and Chandrakant Patil, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Hasan Mushrif, and BJP state chairman Chandrashekhar Bawankule were among those sworn in.
The first person to be sworn in as a cabinet minister was Chandrashekhar Bawankule, the state head of the BJP. Radhakrishna Vikhepatil was another BJP candidate took the oath as a minister. He served as a revenue minister for the Shinde party in the past. In keeping with the alliance’s efforts to finalize its governing team, a number of Shiv Sena and NCP MLAs are scheduled to be admitted into the council of ministers.
After Bawankule, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil (BJP), an eight-term Shirdi MLA who served as the Shinde government’s revenue minister before joining the Congress and Shiv Sena, took the oath of office. Hasan Mushrif (NCP), a four-term Kolhapur district MLA from Kagal, was sworn in as a minister.
The second-term MLA from Kothrud in the Pune district, Chandrakant Patil (BJP), was the MLC in 2014, the minister of public works and revenue in the Devendra Fadnavis administration, and the leader of the Maharashtra BJP from 2019 to 2022. A close friend of Fadnavis and a member of the cabinet, Girish Mahajan (BJP) is a seven-term MLA from Jamner in the Jalgaon district.
Gulabrao Patil (Shiv Sena), five-term MLA from Jalgaon Rural assembly constituency; sided with Eknath Shinde during the party split, part of the new Maharashtra cabinet.
Ganesh Naik (BJP), seventh-term MLA from Airoli; previously with Shiv Sena and NCP before joining BJP in 2019, sworn in as a minister. Dada Bhuse (Shiv Sena), fifth-term MLA from Malegaon (Outer); joined Eknath Shinde’s faction in 2022, appointed as minister.
Sanjay Rathod (Shiv Sena), MLA from Dogras constituency, included in the cabinet. Dhananjay Munde (NCP), second-term MLA, sworn in as a minister. The parties have a short window of time before the session starts to allocate duties to the recently appointed ministers because the portfolio distribution has not yet been finalized.
After extensive discussions, the cabinet was finally formed 10 days after Fadnavis became chief minister, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi present at the ceremony.
Major sectors like tax, education, power, and irrigation are probably going to stay under the control of the BJP. It is anticipated that NCP would maintain its portfolios in agriculture, sports, cooperatives, and finance.
The Shiv Sena and NCP groups, both keen to gain significant posts in the cabinet, presented difficulties for the Mahayuti coalition in maintaining a balance of power. The Mahayuti coalition, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, won the state elections handily.
