Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 9: The first attempt after 41 days to form a full-fledged cabinet and expand the two-member ministry in Maharashtra has caused friction between the alliance partners, the BJP and the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena over inclusion of some tainted ministers.
After days of negotiations with the BJP central leadership over the formation of his cabinet, chief minister Shinde on Tuesday inducted 18 members in his Shinde – Devendra Fadnavis cabinet, nine each from the BJP and his faction of Shiv Sena.
But despite the deputy chief minister and the BJP leader Fadnavis stating that the new cabinet would have adequate representation of women, not a single woman was included in the first expansion, though the strength of the cabinet has still remained less than half that the sanctioned strength—20 against the sanctioned strength of 43—leaving scope of their inclusion at a later stage.
Non-inclusion of a woman as a minister was emphasized by politicians and women’s rights activists. “Maharashtra was the first state in the country to give reservation for women. When 50 per cent of India’s population is of women, they are not represented in the state cabinet,” NCP MP Supriya Sule said. “This shows the BJP’s mindset,” she added.
Murmur of disappointment was also heard in the Shinde camp where 31 MLAs who rebelled against the party leadership on high promises from the BJP and Shinde, are left high and dry. Shinde had reportedly told them that their expectations would be addressed at a later stage.
Governor B S Koshyari administered the oath of office to the 18 ministers, including state BJP president Chandrakant Patil, at Raj Bhavan in south Mumbai on Tuesday. On June 30, Eknath Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister and Devendra Fadnavis took oath as deputy CM.
The new BJP ministers are Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Chandrakant Patil, Vijaykumar Gavit, Girish Mahajan, Suresh Khade, Ravindra Chavan, Atul Save and Mangalprabhat Lodha.
From the Shinde group, Gulabrao Patil, Dada Bhuse, Sanjay Rathod, Sandipan Bhumre, Uday Samant, Tanaji Sawant, Abdul Sattar, Deepak Kesarkar and Shambhuraj Desai were sworn in as ministers. No minister of state was sworn in on Tuesday. There will be another ministry expansion later, an aide of Shinde said. Of the 18 Ministers sworn in at the Raj Bhavan ceremony, 17 were ministers earlier also and only one has become a Minister for the first time.
But the inclusion of Sanjay Rathod from the Shinde quota in the cabinet caused frictions with the BJP as the party state vice-president Chitra Wagh registered her strong protest and said she would continue to fight against his induction. Rathod was the forest minister when Uddhav Thackeray was the Chief Minister and was forced to resign after BJP leaders blamed him for a woman’s suicide in Pune.
Chitra Wagh protested Rathod’s induction into the Cabinet. “It is very unfortunate that former minister Sanjay Rathod, who caused the death of Pooja Chavan, has been given the post of minister again. I will continue my fight against Rathod even though he has become a minister again. I have faith in the judiciary. We will fight and win,” she said.”
Rathod had been forced to resign as State Forest Minister in the erstwhile Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government in 2021 after he came under mounting pressure from the BJP for his alleged connection with the death of Pooja Chavan, a 23-year-old woman from the nomadic banjara community and a Tik Tok star, in Pune.
It was alleged that Sanjay Rathod, a legislator from Digras constituency in Yavatmal, was in relationship with Pooja that went bad leading to her committing suicide. He was cleared, however, by a special investigation team formed by the Yavatmal Superintendent of Police Dilip Patil Bhujbal in August last year.
Responding to criticism, CM Shinde said Rathod had been given a clean chit by the police during the previous government. “Sanjay Rathod had been given a clean chit by the police in the erstwhile MVA government. Hence, he was inducted in the present cabinet. If someone else has anything to say over and above this, we will definitely hear them out,” the Chief Minister said.
An older tweet is going viral too — this one a video by BJP’s Kirit Somaiyya from last year when he said the suicide was in fact “a murder” by Rathod. Somaiyya, who was at the cabinet’s oath-taking function today, has not reacted to allegations of hypocrisy.
In addition to Rathod, objections were also raised against the inclusion of two other ministers. Another newly inducted minister and rebel Sena MLA Abdul Sattar was at the centre of a row on Monday when the names of his three daughters and a son appeared in the list of the 7,880 candidates who were disqualified and banned in connection with the alleged rigging of the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) 2019-20.
Sattar was previously in the Congress and joined the Shiv Sena before the 2019 Assembly elections. He also joined the Shinde camp in June following the rebellion. On the TET controversy, Sattar on Monday alleged it was a political conspiracy and questioned the timing of the list on the eve of the Maharashtra cabinet expansion.
Another newly inducted minister and BJP leader Vijaykumar Gavit was five years back found guilty of corruption and irregularities in the tribal development department led by him between 2004 and 2009. Gavit was in the NCP during 2004-09 and had served as a minister in the then Congress-NCP government. He later joined the BJP and won the Assembly elections in 2014 and 2019.