Pichad, three new faces to be inducted into Maharashtra cabinet

MUMBAI: Maharashtra NCP President Madhukar Pichad and three party MLAs will today take oath as ministers in the Maharashtra government as part of the cabinet reshuffle.

Dilip Sopal, an independent legislator and former NCP leader will also take oath of office and secrecy. He has earlier served as minister of State for Law and Judiciary.

The three new faces to be inducted into the cabinet are Sanjay Savkhare, Uday Samant and Shashikant Shinde.

Pichad (who was tribal minister in Vilasrao Deshmukh government), Shinde and Sopal will be cabinet ministers while Savkhare and Samant will be Ministers of State.

The new ministers come in place of Ramraje Nimbalkar (Water Resources-Krishna Valley development), Babanrao Pachpute (Tribal Development), Laxman Dhobale (Water Supply) and Minister of State for Urban development Bhaskar Jadhav and Minister of State for Transport Gulabrao Devkar.

Pichad is from Akole in Ahmednagar, Shinde from Kotegaon in Satara, Sopal from Barshi in Solapur, Uday Samant from Ratnagiri and Savkhare is from Jalgaon district.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar had last week sought resignations of all party ministers in the state ministry. Last night, Deputy CM Ajit Pawar handed over the list of ministers to be dropped/inducted to Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.

Pichad said that those ministers who have been dropped will be drafted for party work.

The swearing-in ceremony will take place at Raj Bhawan.