In a relatively insignificant reshuffle carried out at the behest of the ruling Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leadership, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday dropped six NCP Ministers and inducted as many persons in their place in his Cabinet.
Quite contrary to the buzz that NCP chief Sharad Pawar created in the State political circles by securing the resignations of his party’s all 20 Ministers in the State Cabinet on Friday last, Tuesday’s reshuffle — in a manner that it was carried out – proved to be an anti-climax, given that the exercise would in no way help improve the much-eroded image of Pawar-led party, ahead of the lok Sabha and Assembly polls in the State.
For, the NCP leadership dropped six low-profile Ministers from the State Cabinet, even while retaining the senior party Ministers like Chhagan Bhujbal and Sunil Tatkare who are facing serious corruption charges.
The six NCP Ministers who were shown the door were: Ramraje Naik-Nimbalkar, Babanrao Pachpute and laxman Dhobale, all holding Cabinet portfolios, Bhaskar Jadhav, Prakash Solanke and Gulabrao Deokar, all Ministers of State.
Inducted into the State Cabinet in place of the dropped Ministers were: State NCP chief Madhukar Pichad, party’s Shashikant Shinde, independent MlA Dilip Sopal, all of Cabinet rank, Suresh Dhas, Uday Samant and Sanjay Savkhare, all as Ministers of State.
The six new Ministers were administered the oath of office and secrecy by Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan at Raj Bhawan. Of the six sworn in as Ministers, four are new faces. They are: Shinde, Savkhare, Samant and Dhas. They are from Koregaon (western Maharashtra), Jalgaon (north Maharashtra),Ratnagiri (Konkan region) and Beed (Marathwada region) respectively.
While Pichhad was a senior Minister in the State Cabinet before he was appointed as the State Cabinet, Sopal, a former NCP functionary, had earlier been a Minister of State for law and Judiciary.
As per the portfolio allocations made in the evening, Pichhad has replaced Pachpute as the new tribal welfare Minister, while Sopal and Shinde have been vested with the portfolios of Water Supply & Sanitation and Water Resources (Krishna Valley Development Corporation) held respectively by Dhobale and Naik-Nimballkar earlier.
In the reshuffle in which senior NCP Ministers like Bhujbal and Tatkare were spared of the axe, Deokar was removed for his alleged involvement in the Jalgaon low-cost housing scam, while Jadhav paid price for incurring wasteful expenditure over the lavish weddings of his two children at a time when the state was reeling under severe drought, however, the others like Solanke, Dhobale, Pachpute and Nimbalkar were replaced owing to their poor performance.
Though it was NCP chief Sharad Pawar who had secured the resignations of all the 20 NCP Ministers on Friday last, the reshuffle of the State Cabinet bore the stamp of his nephew and deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar. This was given that all the new faces in the State Cabinet are his supporters – a fact that negated the impression the NCP chief sought to create at the time of seeking the resignations of all his party Ministers that he was calling the shots in the party.
Contrary to the speculation that he would use the Cabinet reshuffle to improve its vastly eroded image in the run-up to the lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the state, the NCP chief has refrained from dropping Bhujbal and Tatkare – the two senior NCP ministers who being probed for the allegations of corruption – from the State Cabinet.
Of course, it was widely known that he would not touch deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who has not been cleared as yet for his alleged involvement in the multi-thousand crore irrigation scam.
On its part, Chief Minister Prithiraj Chavan of the Congress has not also acquitted himself well from the reshuffle, by not bothering to sack his party’s minister Rajendra Darda, who is being investigated by the CBI for his alleged involvement in the coal block allocation scam, from his Cabinet.