New Delhi: Eknath Shinde on Tuesday, August 9, expanded his two-member ministry 41 days after taking oath as the Maharashtra chief minister by inducting 18 ministers, nine each from his rebel Shiv Sena group and the BJP.
BJP president Chandrakant Patil was among the prominent leaders sworn in as cabinet ministers at Raj Bhavan in south Mumbai. The strength of the cabinet now stands at 20, less than half the maximum allowed strength of 43.
Governor B.S. Koshyari administered the oath of office to the ministers.
On June 30, Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister and Devendra Fadnavis took oath as deputy CM. Shinde’s rebellion had ensured the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Agahadi government.
The new BJP ministers are Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Chandrakant Patil, Vijaykumar Gavit, Girish Mahajan, Suresh Khade, Ravindra Chavan, Atul Save and Mangalprabhat Lodha.
From the Shinde group, Gulabrao Patil, Dada Bhuse, Sanjay Rathod, Sandipan Bhumre, Uday Samant, Tanaji Sawant, Abdul Sattar, Deepak Kesarkar and Shambhuraj Desai were sworn in as ministers.
No minister of state was sworn in on Tuesday. There will be another ministry expansion later, an aide of Shinde said.
The fact that the cabinet was not expanded for more than a month after Shide was sworn in as chief minister had invited criticism from the Bombay high court. On August 5, hearing a petition seeking directions to the home minister to decide his appeal for a gun licence expeditiously, Justice Revati Mohite Dere orally observed, “What is the point in passing orders? There has to be a minister to implement [the directions].”
While the BJP has inducted Lodha, who hails from Mumbai, the Shinde group hasn’t included any legislator from the financial capital, where municipal corporation elections are slated later this year.
Zero women, three controversial MLAs inducted
The list doesn’t include women, a move that was criticised by opposition politicians and women’s rights activists.
The BJP has 12 women legislators in the state, including one in the Legislative Council. The Shinde group has two women legislators and also the backing of an independent woman MLA.
There are 28 women legislators in Maharashtra, including three in the Legislative Council.
“Maharashtra was the first state in the country to give reservation for women. When 50 per cent of India’s population is of women, they are not represented in the state cabinet,” Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP Supriya Sule said. This shows the BJP’s mindset, she added.
Additionally, three of the 18 ministers sworn in on Tuesday during the Maharashtra cabinet expansion have been mired in controversies.
Newly inducted minister Sanjay Rathod, who also served as a minister in the previous Uddhav Thackeray-led state government, had resigned last year after he was linked to a woman’s death in Pune.
When Shinde rebelled against the party leadership in June this year, Rathod joined his camp.
Shinde on Tuesday said police had given a clean chit to Rathod, hence he was inducted into the state cabinet.
However, state BJP vice president Chitra Wagh it was unfortunate that Rathod was inducted into the cabinet when he was allegedly responsible for a woman’s death. “Even if he is made a cabinet minister, I will continue my fight against him. I have faith in the judiciary. We will fight and win,” she said.
Another newly inducted minister and rebel Sena MLA Abdul Sattar was at the centre of a row on Monday when the names of his three daughters and a son appeared in the list of the 7,880 candidates who were disqualified and banned in connection with the alleged rigging of the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) 2019-20.
Sattar was previously in the Congress and joined the Shiv Sena before the 2019 assembly elections.
He also joined the Shinde camp in June following the rebellion.
On the TET controversy, Sattar on Monday alleged it was a political conspiracy and questioned the timing of the list on the eve of the Maharashtra cabinet expansion.
Another newly inducted minister, BJP leader Vijaykumar Gavit, was found guilty five years ago of corruption and irregularities in the tribal development department, which he led between 2004 and 2009.
Gavit was in the NCP during 2004-09 and had served as a minister in the then Congress-NCP government. He later joined the BJP and won the assembly elections in 2014 and 2019.
Walking the tight rope?
According to the Indian Express, both the Shinde camp and the BJP will have to walk the a tight rope to pacify legislators who have not been accommodated in the cabinet. Shinde, who has the support of nearly 40 Shiv Sena rebel MLAs and 10 independent MLAs, has asked them to “show restraint and not react at the moment”, the newspaper reported. They will be included in the second round of expansion, likely to take place after the monsoon session of the assembly.
The BJP, which has 106 legislators, also has a “long list of aspirants”, according to IE. It quoted a party functionary as saying, “Being a bigger party, [the cabinet] should have accommodated more candidates [from the BJP].”
