Guardian ministers reshuffled

MUMBAI, June 22: Mahatrashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi today announced the new guardian ministers for six districts after the reshuffle...

MUMBAI, June 22: Mahatrashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi today announced the new guardian ministers for six districts after the reshuffle of the cabinet yesterday. The six districts include Osmanabad, Nanded, Pune, Nashik, Buldhana and Ahmednagar.

While Osmanabad will see Minister of State Arjun Khotkar as a Guardian Minister replacing Ramdas Kadam, Minister of State for Food and Civil Supplies, Suresh Lavle has been made the Guardian Minister of Nanded district who has replaced Labour Minister Sabir Sheikh.

Minister of State for Industries Leeladhar Dake will replace former Agriculture Minister Shashikant Sutar in Pune and Housing Development Minister Suresh Jain will be the Guardian Minister for Nashik replacing Social Welfare Minister Babanrao Gholap. While Ahmednagar, which was under Dake will see Agriculture Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil as its new Guardian Minister and Minister of State for Forests Vind Gudadhe-Patil will replace Health Minister Daulatrao Aher in Buldhana district.

Speaking on the occasion, Joshi commented on the announcement to ban the stone quarries of Navi Mumbai made by him few days back saying that the decision was taken pertaining to the environment problems caused by the quarries. The government is considering implementation of the same decision throughout the state, he said and added that Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray has been pressing hard to look into this issue for the past 22 years.

The list of the Guardian Ministers and the districts is as follows:

Gopinath Munde, Beed; Sudhir Joshi, Mumbai city; Prakash Mehta, Mumbai suburbs; Ramdas Kadam, Kolhapur; Ramchandra Dange, Sangli; Arjin Khatekar, Osmanabad; Mahadeo Shivankar, Bhandara; Suresh Navale, Nanded; Shobha Phadnavis, Chandrapur; Jaiprakash Shankarlal, Parbhani; Vinod Patil, Buldhana; Narayan Rane, Sindhudurg; Haribhau Bagde, Jalna; Suresh Kumar Jain, Nashik; Govindrao Chaudhary, Dhule; Ganesh Naik, Thane; Jagannath Patil, Solapur; Leeladhar Dake, Pune; Nitin Gadkari, Nagpur; Chandrakant Khaire, Aurangabad; Eknath Khadse, Jalgaon; Anil Deshmukh, Vardha; Harshavardhan Aptil, Satara; Prabhakar More, Raigad; Jagdish Gupta, Amravati; Gajanan Kirtikar, Gadchiroli; Govardhan Sharma, Yavatmal; Gullabrao Gawde, Akola; Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, Ahmednagar; Ravindra Mane, Ratnagiri; Jaysinghrao Patil, Latur.