While Narayan Rane is tipped to make it to the NDA Ministry as cabinet minister, other three are likely to get to the state ministerial berths if they are included in the cabinet. (File)
Even as speculations are rife that two ministers from Maharashtra are to be ousted from the Union Cabinet, four BJP MPs from the state have rushed to Delhi and are expected to take oath during the cabinet expansion slated for this evening.
BJP sources said Narayan Rane, Bharati Pawar, Bhagwat Karad and Kapil Patil have rushed to Delhi after getting a call ahead of today’s reshuffle. “Rane’s inclusion in the cabinet was a certainty, but we are not confident about other three,” said a BJP leader. The two ministers from Maharashtra who reportedly resigned are Raosaheb Danve and Sanjay Dhotre.
While Rane is tipped to make it to the NDA Ministry as cabinet minister, other three are likely to get to the state ministerial berths if they are included in the cabinet.
Meanwhile, Shiv Sena has criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the possibility of inclusion of Rane into his ministry. “Rane is a ZP block leader. He was a clerk before Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray made him a chief minister. He stabbed the man who made him big…Where Rane goes, he creates a mess…The Modi Ministry will meet the same fate,” said Sena leader Kishore Tiwari.
Rane, a former chief minister, had quit Shiv Sena and joined the Congress in 2005. Two years back, he joined BJP and was apparently promised a ministerial berth. The BJP had roped in Rane to take on Sena. Rane on his part has been unsparing on his attack on Sena and Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray which even BJP has not been able to match.
Describing the cabinet expansion has meaningless exercise, Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said, “The expansion of Modi Ministry is nothing but adding a few more heads to shift the blame of unprecedented failure. Shaky economy, skyrocketing inflation, women being humiliated, unemployed and helpless youth, angry farmers, soldiers in danger, growing terrorism in Kashmir, the third wave of the Corona and impending disaster are some of the issues the country is facing today. In such a situation, the issue of cabinet expansion is meaningless because no matter how many masks are changed, the truth can not be hidden. The truth is that this government is being run by only one and a half people. One Modi and half Amit Shah! Rest are musical chairs!”
Sawant said these ministers will not have much work except trolling. So we will keep asking questions to PM Modi and Home Minister Shah who are sitting on one chair and half stool.
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“They don’t have time to talk to the agitating farmers, to plan a fight against the third wave of corona. There is no time to call an all-party meeting. But it is clear that they have time for playing the cabinet expansion game with party hoppers and power hungry leaders in such a massive crisis for humanity. This is the real face of the Modi government. The common man who is fighting for his life has nothing to do with the Modi government’s game of power,” he said.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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