The ministry of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde was expanded on Tuesday as 18 ministers took oath at Raj Bhavan in south Mumbai. Among the ministers are BJP's Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Sudhir Mungantiwar and BJP president Chandrakant Patil. The ministers include nine from the BJP and the Shinde group.
The cabinet expansion took place almost 41 days after Shinde took the CM's oath.
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.
They were sworn in as ministers from the Shinde group Gulabrao Patil, Dada Bhuse, Sanjay Rathod, Sandipan Bhumre, Uday Samant, Tanaji Sawant, Abdul Sattar, Deepak Kesarkar and Shambhuraj Desai.
Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister and Devendra Fadnavis took the oath as deputy CM on June 30.
The strength of the Maharashtra ministry would be reduced to 20, less than half the maximum allowed strength of 43.
Shinde, who emerged as a surprise choice for the top post after he managed to take a major chunk of Shiv Sena MLAs with him after the rebellion in June, will have a difficult task to accommodate all of them in the ministry, sources said.
Prior to Cabinet expansion, the CM has made seven visits to New Delhi in the last month, and with every visit there was talk of it.
The expansion of the ministry was about the corner.