The first cabinet meeting of the Eknath Shinde government’s newly formed cabinet after expansion, is scheduled to take place on Wednesday.
The cabinet expansion came over after 40 days after CM Shinde and Dy CM Devendra Fadnavis were sworn in.
The grand ceremony of cabinet expansion took place on Tuesday with a total of 18 MLAs– 9 each from the Bharatiya Janata Party and rest 9 from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena faction at Raj Bhavan.
On June 30, Shinde had taken oath as Maharashtra Chief Minister and Devendra Fadnavis as his deputy.
The BJP MLAs who who took oath were– Chandrakant Patil, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Girish Mahajan, Suresh Khade, Radha Krishna Vikhe Patil, Ravindra Chavhan, Mangal Prabhat Lodha, Vijaykumar Gavit and Atul Save.
While leaders from Shiv Sena inducted were– Dada Bhuse, Shambhuraje Desai, Sandeepan Bhumre, Uday Samant, Tanaji Sawant, Abdul Sattar, Deepak Kesarkar, Gulabrao Patil and Sanjay Rathod.
On June 28, Fadnavis met Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari and asked him for a floor test. The next day, Uddhav Thackeray offered his resignation to the Governor as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra.
On August 6, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had said no ministerial-level powers have been given to the secretaries except in quasi-judicial matters.
The Opposition in the state had accused the Chief Minister of functioning as a two-member cabinet and having designed the decision-making powers to the bureaucrats. He said these constituencies included those held by Shiv Sena leaders who have now joined Team Shinde.