The swearing-in ceremony of the BJP-dominated Mahayuti government is most likely to take place in Mumbai by Wednesday, November 27 or even earlier, it is learnt. The term of the current Maharashtra assembly (Vidhan Sabha) ends on November 26.
A meeting of the BJP’s parliamentary board is scheduled in Mumbai on Monday which is expected to finalise Devendra Fadnavis as Maharashtra Chief Minister. It is learnt that this meeting will be followed by another meeting scheduled between Union Minister Amit Shah as well as Eknath Shinde, Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar, who are all expected to be sworn in.
The Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Ministers are likely to take oath on Tuesday, November 26, while the swearing-in of other ministers is likely to take place separately later, after finalising the list of the ministers for each party. The venue of the swearing-in has not yet been finalised, but indications are that it could be either the Wankhede Cricket Stadium or the Shivaji Park ground in the south western coastal suburb of Dadar.
A list of faces likely to become cabinet ministers in the BJP-dominated Maharashtra government is out. It includes Devendra Fadnavis, Eknath Shinde, Ajit Pawar, Girish Mahajan, Pankaja Munde, Madhuri Misal, Ganesh Naik, Gopichand Padalkar, Ravindra Chavan, Mangalprabhat Lodha, Chandrasekhar Bawankule, Ashish Shelar, Shivendraraje Bhosle, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Rahul Kul, Sanjay Kute, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil and Rana Jagjitsingh.
Sources say that after a joint session of Parliament to commemorate Samvidhan Divas on Tuesday, November 26, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior leaders are expected to fly down from Delhi to Mumbai in order to attend the oath-taking ceremony.
Meanwhile, intense lobbying for the Maharashtra Chief Minister’s post is still underway, but Devendra Fadnavis is most likely to be named the chief minister of the new government, along with two Deputy CMs, who could be Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar. The crucial home department is likely to go to the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
At a meeting of all Shinde MLAs which was held at a suburban Bandra hotel in Mumbai on Sunday, Shinde-led Shiv Sena MLAs demanded that he must be made Maharashtra Chief Minister, since Shinde was the architect of the ‘Laadki Bahin Yojana’ which is said to have played a key role in bringing the BJP-backed Mahayuti to power in Maharashtra. Shinde is also said to have staked a claim for the Chief Minister’s post.