In the first-ever expansion of his ministry undertaken by him ten days after he and two Deputy Chief Ministers were sworn in, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadanvis on Sunday inducted 39 ministers, including 33 ranked ones, into his Cabinet, while he dropped 10 senior MahaYuti leaders, including  BJP’s Sudhir Mungantiwar and Nationalist Congress Party NCP (Ajit Pawar) leader Chhagan Bhujbal, from it.

In a swearing-in ceremony held at Raj Bhavan in Nagpur for the second time since 1981, Maharashtra Governor CP Radhakrishnan administered oath of office to the 39 ministers, including six Ministers of State, ahead of the start of the Winter Session of the Maharashtra Legislature on Monday.

Interestingly enough, as many as 25 new faces found place in the Devendra Fadnavis Cabinet. Late BJP leader Gopinath Munde’s daughter Pankaja Munde, who has made a comeback as a State minister for the second time in her career,  is among the four women ministers in the State Cabinet.

With the induction of 39 ministers, the total number of ministers in the State Cabinet has gone up to 42, which is one less than the stipulated 43-member ministry which accounts for 15 percent of total 288 members in the State Assembly. Of the 39 ministers inducted into the State Cabinet, 19 are from the BJP, 11 from the Shiv Sena and 9 from the NCP (AP). 

Apart from Mungantiwar and Bhujbal, eight other senior leaders from the MahaYuti, comprising Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) and NCP (AP), who have been dropped from the Fadnavis Cabinet are Vijay Kumar Gavit, Suresh Khade, Tanaji Sawant, Adbul Sattar, Deepal Kesarkar, Dilip Walse-Patil, Anil Patil and Sanjay Bansode.

What has come as a big surprise is the induction of 25 ministerial faces who were not in the earlier government include Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Ganesh Naik, Pankaja Munde, Ashish Shelar, Jaikumar Rawal,, Nitesh Rane (all from the BJP), Pratap Sarnaik, Sanjay Rathod, Dada Bhuse, Sanjay Shirsat (all from the Shiv Sena) Makrand PatilHasan Mushraf, Narahari Hirwal and Dattaraya Bharne (all from the Ajit Pawar NCP).

Apart from Pankaja Munde, the three other women who have made it into the State Cabinet are BJP’s Madhuri Misal, Meghana Bordikar and NCP’s Aditi Tatkare.

The dropping of Sudhir Mungantiwar, a seven-time MLA from Ballapur in  Vidarbha, has come as a big shock to the rank and file of the BJP. In fact, he was number two in the Devendra Fadnavis Cabinet that existed from 2014 to 2019. A seven-time MLA, two-term MLC and a former deputy chief minister, Bhujbal has surprised one and all. A senior OBC leader, Bhujbal is also the President of Akhil Bharatiya Mahatma Phule Samata Parishad.

Similarly, the omission of Dilip Walse-Patil, who is a seven-term MLA from Ambegaon in Pune, has come as a surprise. A strong lieutenant of Sharad Pawar in the distant past, Patil joined Ajit Pawar when the latter engineered a vertical split in the united NCP led by Sharad Pawar and joined the Eknath Shinde-led MahaYuti government in July 2022 

Sattar has been dropped many times in the past for courting controversies for his statements as the BJP high-command was very careful on such issues. Kesarkar was the Shiv Sena spokesperson and his omission from Fadnavis Cabinet  has come as a bit of a surprise.

Two members from Munde’s family have made it to the State Cabinet. While Pankaja Munde is BJP MLC, Dhananjay Munde, an MLA from Parli in Beed district. Forty-five-year-old Pankaja is the daughter of BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister late  Gopinath Munde and niece of BJP leader and former Union Minister late Pramod Mahajan.

Dhananjay (49)  is the son of Pandit Anna Munde, the brother of late Gopinath Munde. Dhananjay is considered close to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Minister and NCP President Ajit Pawar.

It may be recalled that in the 2019 polls, Dhananjay, who was then with the united NCP had defeated Pankaja from Parli after which the latter was sidelined from the state politics. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Pankaja was fielded by the BJP as its candidate, instead of her sister Dr Pritam Munde. However, Pankaja lost the polls. Later, she was accommodated as an MLC.

Pankaja and her cousin Dhanjay were estranged cousins till one year ago. However, ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls, the Munde cousins patched up.

Given that she was in the ‘dog house’ for nearly five years after her defeat in the 2019 State Assembly polls, Pankaka’s induction into the State Cabinet is being seen as political rehabilitation.