Maharashtra Cabinet expansion postponed after Congress fails to finalise its list

The impending expansion of Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's Cabinet is unlikely to take place on Tuesday (December 24). It is to be noted that Shiv Sena-Congress-Nationalist Congress Party coalition government of Maharashtra was expected to witness a Cabinet expansion on Tuesday but the decision has been postponed because the Congress high command is yet to finalise the name of its MLAs who will be included in the Cabinet.

Sources told Zee Media that the Shiv Sena and the NCP have already prepared the list of MLAs who will take oath as ministers in CM Uddhav's cabinet. It is expected that the expansion of the Maharashtra cabinet would now take place on December 30.

Sources said that Ajit Pawar, Jitendra Awhad, Dhramrao Baba Atram, Nawab Malik, Dhananjay Munde, Bharat Bhalke and Hasan Mushrif are set to take oath as Cabinet minister from NCP quota, while Shiv Sena MLAs Ramdas Kadam, Anil Parab, Neelam Gorhe, Ravindara Waykar, Sunil Prabhu, Abdul Sattar, Bhaskar Jadhav and Deepak Kesarkar are expected to be included in the Cabinet.

It is learnt that Congress high command has decided to make Ashok Chavan, Prithviraj Chavan, Vijay Wettiwar, Varsha Gaekwad, Yashomati Thakur, Sunil Kedar, Satej Patil, Amit Deshmukh, K C Padwi and Vishwajeet Kadam as Cabinet ministers in Maharashtra.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra at a grand function organised at the Shivaji Park in Mumbai on November 28. Two legislators each from the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress, took oath as ministers on the same day. These leaders are Shiv Sena`s Eknath Shinde and Subhash Desai, NCP`s Jayant Patil and Chhagan Bhujbal, and Congress` Balasaheb Thorat and Nitin Raut.