A major cabinet expansion in Maharashtra under Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis took place at the Raj Bhavan in Nagpur on Sunday. Prominent leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena, and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) took their oaths as ministers. BJP leaders including Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Ashish Shelar, Chandrakant Patil, Girish Mahajan, Ganesh Naik, Mangal Pratap Lodha, Jaykumar Rawal, Pankaja Munde, and Atul Sawe were sworn in.
From Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena camp, ministers Dada Bhuse, Shambhuraj Desai, Sanjay Rathod, Gulabrao Patil, and Uday Samant joined the cabinet.
Ajit Pawar’s NCP saw Hasan Mushrif and Dhananjay Munde take their oaths at the event.
The expansion follows just 10 days after Fadnavis assumed office for the third time on December 5. The Mahayuti alliance secured a strong mandate in the state’s November 20 elections, winning 230 out of 288 seats. The BJP emerged as the dominant party with 132 seats, while Shiv Sena and NCP secured 57 and 41 seats respectively.