Maharashtra cabinet expansion: Ashok Chavan, Amit Deshmukh among 10 Congress MLAs to take oath today, claim sources

Mumbai: Ten Congress MLAs, including former chief minister Ashok Chavan, will join the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra council of ministers during its expansion on Monday, party sources said. [caption id=“attachment_7840291” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray greets his supporters after being sworn-in as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra on 28 November. PTI[/caption] The swearing-in will take place at 1 pm in the Vidhan Bhavan (state legislature) premises where a total of 36 ministers are likely to take oath, they said. From the Congress’ side, Ashok Chavan, KC Padvi, Vijay Wadettiwar, Amit Deshmukh, Sunil Kadar, Yashomati Thakur, Varsha Gaikwad and Aslam Sheikh will take oath as Cabinet ministers, the sources said. Besides, Satej Patil and Vishwajit Kadam of the Congress will be sworn in as ministers of state, they added. The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by Uddhav Thackeray was formed on 28 November. The state Cabinet currently has six ministers, besides the chief minister. Balasaheb Thorat and Nitin Raut of the Congress, Eknath Shinde and Subhash Desai of the Shiv Sena and Jayant Patil and Chhagan Bhujbal of the NCP took oath along with Thackeray on 28 November. Maharashtra can have a maximum of 43 ministers. The size of council of ministers cannot exceed 15 percent of the total number of MLAs, which is 288 in the state. The Shiv Sena last month joined hands with the Congress and NCP, its traditional adversaries, after its alliance with the BJP collapsed over the issue of sharing the chief ministerial post. As per the power-sharing formula decided by the three MVA allies, the Sena will get 15 ministerial berths, excluding the CM’s post, the NCP will also get 15 and the Congress 12. The Shiv Sena has 56 MLAs, the NCP-54 and the Congress-44 in the 288-member House.