Maharashtra Cabinet Expansion: BJP's Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Pankaja Munde Among Mahayuti Leaders Sworn-In As Ministers

The Maharashtra cabinet was sworn in on Sunday (15 December) in the presence of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and his deputies Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar.

Governor C P Radhakrishnan administered the oath of office to the new ministers from the BJP-NCP-Shiv Sena Mahayuti alliance in Nagpur.

BJP’s state unit chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, Chandrakant Patil, Ashish Shelar, Pankaja Munde, Ganesh Naik, Jayakumar Rawal, Shivendraraje Bhosale and Girish Mahajan were among the ministers who took oath on Sunday.

From Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, Uday Samant, Gulabrao Patil, Dadaji Bhuse, Sanjay Rathod, Sanjay Shirsat and Bharat Gogavale were among the Shinde Sena ministers who were sworn in today.

Ajit Pawar’s NCP had Hasan Mushrif, Dhananjay Munde, Dattatray Bharne, Aditi Tatkare, Manikrao Kokate and Narhari Zirwal among others taking oath in Nagpur.

The Maharashtra Cabinet expansion comes over three weeks after BJP-led Mahayuti swept the elections in the state by winning over 230 seats in the 288-member Assembly.

On 5 December, Fadnavis had taken oath as the Maharashtra Chief Minister and Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar as his deputies at a programme in Mumbai that was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, other BJP stalwarts and allies. 

The swearing-in of the state cabinet in Nagpur comes a day before the winter session of the Maharashtra legislature.

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