New Delhi: The much-awaited Maharahstra Minister portfolio allocation took place on Friday and newly-elected Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar got Finance and Planning department.
Within 12 days of him joining the Shinde-Fadnavis government, Ajit Pawar managed to get his MLAs ministers’ post. Chhagan Bhujbal from the ‘rebel group’ of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) got the food and civil supplies ministry.
Meanwhile, Cabinet Minister Anil Patil has been allocated Relief and Rehabilitation, Disaster Management Department, while Aditi Sunil Tatkare will handle the Women and Child Development.
While Dhananjay Munde gets Agriculture and Dilip Walse Patil gets Co-operative Department, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil gets Revenue, Animal Husbandry.
After the induction of Ajit Pawar into the state government, many leaders of other two camps — Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena were quite angry over the sharing of minsiter’s portfolio.
This followed the constitution of coordination committee to control the damage and keep the party leaders satisfied with ‘potentially-appropriate’ allocation of minsiterial posts.
Maharashtra Industries Minister and Shiv Sena leader Uday Samant had informed about the committee and said, “The committee will coordinate among the three parties. There will be 12 leaders from all three parties in this coordination committee. Four leaders from each party have been named for the committee.”
Earlier on July 2, Ajit Pawar led a faction of NCP leaders to join Shinde-Fadnavis government in Maharashtra. After which, he also claimed that the NCP belongs to him.
Meanwhile, NCP founder Sharad Pawar denied these claims and said he will continue to be the chief of the party that he founded in 1999.