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Mumbai: Following his meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi yesterday, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Wednesday laid to rest all speculations of any discussion with Amit Shah regarding the long-pending second phase expansion of the Maharashtra cabinet.
It may be recalled that while speaking to media persons in Aurangabad, Devendra Fadnavis had remarked that the much-delayed expansion would be carried out “at an appropriate time.” Fadnavis along with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had met the Union Home Minister on the sidelines of the meeting on Cooperative Sugar mills in the state.
“Our meeting with Amit Shah was focused on issues pertaining to the cooperative sector and sugar industry. We did not discuss cabinet expansion,” clarified the Deputy CM. While expressing intent to carry it out soon, Fadnavis said the exercise would be undertaken at the appropriate time.
Both Shinde and Fadnavis had assumed power on June 30, 2022 by forming the new Shiv Sena (BSS – Shinde camp)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. That followed after Shinde’s intra-party revolt had toppled the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.
The first phase of the cabinet expansion was done in August after almost 40 days, drawing sharp criticism from the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena and other opposition MVA parties including the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress.
Then, only 18 ministers – nine MLAs from the Shinde camp and nine from the BJP – were sworn in by adhering to a 50:50 division formula between the two allies. With the permissible limit being 43 ministers, this leaves 25 more ministers to be inducted in the second phase.
The long delay even after seven months of the Shinde-Fadnavis government has sparked disgruntlement within both the Shinde faction as well as the BJP, with seething resentments among the aspirant leaders in both parties.
