Ajit Pawar to become Maharashtra deputy chief minister, not take home

MUMBAI: When CM Uddhav Thackeray of the Shiv Sena expands his cabinet on December 30, controversial NCP leader Ajit Pawar will be inducted as deputy chief minister. However, he may not take up the home portfolio, which already is with the Shiv Sena but which may be controlled soon by another NCP leader.

If a senior NCP leader is to be believed, Ajit Pawar was to be brought into the Maha Vikas Aghadi government’s cabinet on November 28 itself. However, NCP president Sharad Pawar decided it would be best to induct him at a later stage in view of Ajit’s “mistake” of joining hands with the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis. He was sworn in as Fadnavis’s deputy on November 23 before the regime collapsed in 80 hours.

The NCP leader said the party had the option of allotting Ajit the water resources department which he had held earlier, home, or finance and planning. “However, Ajit Pawar has informed the NCP leadership that he would prefer the finance and planning department and that he is not keen on either water resources or home,” he said.


In 1995, Gopinath Munde, who was deputy CM in the first Sena-BJP government, had the home portfolio. The NCP’s Chhagan Bhujbal, who became deputy CM in 1999, also kept the department, as did the party’s R R Patil in 2004.

36 new cabinet members to be sworn in with Ajit Pawar on December 30
Ajit was deputy CM and water resources minister in the pre-2014 Congress-NCP government and was accused of corruption and irregularities in allotment of irrigation contracts.

Subsequently, ACB conducted a probe into the scam, and Ajit has since been given a clean chit. Sources said with Ajit deciding not to take up the water resources department, it may be allotted to Jayant Patil. The Sena now has the home department, but that may go to an NCP man, Dilip Walse Patil, former speaker of the legislative assembly. “Sharad Pawar will take a final decision on allotment of portfolios,” he said. The NCP leader said along with Ajit, 36 new cabinet members–13 belonging to the NCP, 13 to Sena and 10 to Congress—will be sworn in on December 30. Along with Thackeray, Congress’s Balasaheb Thorat and Nitin Raut, NCP’s Jayant Patil and Chhagan Bhubjal and Sena’s Subhash Desai and Eknath Shinde were sworn in on November 28.