Maharashtra cabinet expansion: Ajit Pawar gets Finance & Planning dept, his ministers key portfolios

The breakaway NCP group has also got Cooperation (Dilip Walse-Patil), Agriculture (Dhananjay Munde), Medical Education (Hasan Mushrif), Food and Civil Supplies (Chhagan Bhujbal), Women and Child Development (Aditi Tatkare), Relief and Rehabilitation (Anil Patil), Food and Drug Administration (Dharmaraobaba Atram), and Sports and Youth Welfare as well as Ports (Sanjay Bansode).

Five of these departments were earlier with the BJP: Medical Education and Sports and Youth Welfare were both with Girish Mahajan, Cooperation was with Atul Save, Women and Child Development with Mangal Prabhat Lodha, and Food and Civil Supplies with Ravindra Chavan.

Mahajan and Save have been given Tourism and Housing respectively, which were additionally held by Lodha and Fadnavis.

While Chief Minister Eknath Shinde held the Relief and Rehabilitation portfolio earlier, the other departments which were with the Sena are: Food and Drug Administration (Sanjay Rathod), Agriculture (Abdul Sattar), and Ports (Dada Bhuse).

Rathod now has the Soil and Water Conservation department, Sattar will be in charge of the Minority as well as Marketing departments, and Bhuse will be in charge of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation. All these portfolios were with Shinde earlier.

The redistribution of portfolios shows that the breakaway NCP group has managed to retain the upper hand in negotiations, clinching key portfolios linked to the party’s rural voter base.

While the Finance and Planning portfolio ensures control over finances of all departments, including sanctioning additional funds to areas where its leaders hold sway, with a senior leader like Walse-Patil in charge of cooperation, the party is likely to regain its control over the cooperative sector, including sugar factories, cooperative banks and financial institutions, which had been challenged by the BJP in recent years.

The party’s rural voter base is also likely to benefit through departments such as Agriculture, Women and Child Development, Relief and Rehabilitation, and Food and Civil Supplies.

The distribution of portfolios comes after days of uncertainty following the swearing-in of nine NCP MLAs led by Ajit Pawar on July 2. In between, both Ajit Pawar and NCP Rajya Sabha member Praful Patel travelled to Delhi to meet Union Home Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah.

The Sena is learnt to have resisted the transfer of key portfolios to the NCP, especially the Finance and Planning department to Ajit Pawar. In 2022, when Shiv Sena MLAs led by Shinde rebelled against the then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and brought down the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, they had cited Ajit Pawar, who was Finance and Planning Minister, as a key reason for their discontent. The MLAs had claimed that Ajit Pawar chose to give funds only to NCP MLAs and neglected the Sena legislators.