Maharashtra Cabinet expansion: Eknath Shinde govt finally gets ministers and a row over Sanjay Rathod

Maharashtra’s long awaited cabinet expansion finally took place on Tuesday with 18 Ministers being sworn in at Raj Bhavan. Nine Ministers from the BJP and an equal number from the Eknath Shinde camp in the Shiv Sena have been sworn in as Ministers. Maharashtra has been functioning without a cabinet expansion ever since Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis took oath on June 30.

From the BJP Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, State BJP Chief Chandrakant Patil, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Vijaykumar Gavit, Girish Mahajan, Suresh Khade, Ravindra Chavan, Atul Save and Mumbai BJP Chief Mangal Prabhat Lodha took oath.

From the Shinde camp, Gulabrao Patil, Dada Bhuse, Sanjay Rathod, Abdul Sattar, Sandipan Bhumre, Uday Samant, Tanaji Sawant, Deepak Kesarkar and Shambhuraj Desai took oath.


Prior to the oath taking ceremony Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had a meeting with the rebel Sena rebel MLAs where he tried to assuage the concerns of those who were not getting a ministerial berth. Shinde has apparently told the MLAs that the cabinet would be expanded again after the Maharashtra assembly monsoon session that is to begin this month.

Meanwhile the Uddhav Thackeray group that also claims to represent the real Shiv Sena has claimed that the Sena MLAs who have not got cabinet berths are in touch with them. “12 of the Sena MLAs are in touch with us,” claimed Shiv Sena MP Vinayak Raut.