Khaire takes over from Naik

Pratapsinh Mohite-Patil is the new Minister of State for Co-operation while Vinayak Korde is Minister of State for Dairy Development, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries. Vijay Girkar gets Social Welfare, Tribal Welfare, Women and Child Welfare and Ex-Servicemen’s Welfare.

Pramod Navalkar hasbeen given the Information and Public Relations department in addition to Trade and Commerce, Cultural Affairs, Protocol and Prohibition Propaganda. Dairy Development, Animal Husbandry and Revenue minister Narayan Rane has been given additional charge of Ports, earlier held by Navalkar. Minister of State for Transport K N Dhabekar has been given the additional responsibility of the Finance and Planning department held by Ravindra Mane who will continue to be in charge of Urban Development, Water Supply and Irrigation.

Minister of State for Forests Vinod Gudadhe-Patil has been relieved of the Labour department and given Relief and Rehabilitation and Environment in its place. No changes have been made in the departments held by other ministers.Earlier, in a simple and rather sombre ceremony at Raj Bhavan, eight new ministers were sworn in to the three-year-old Manohar Joshi ministry this evening.

Governor P C Alexander administered the oath of office and secrecy to the incumbents which include Shiv Sena’sDivakar Raote and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s A T Pawar as Cabinet members and, Independent MLA Dilip Sopal, Pratap Jadhav of the Sena, Digambar Pawar, Vinayak Korde, Vijay Girkar and Pratapsinh Mohite-Patil as Ministers of State.

Joshi, his deputy Gopinath Munde, Labour Minister Sabir Sheikh, Minister of State for Education Anil Deshmukh and Minister of State for Housing Raj Purohit were among those present at the ceremony. Surprisingly, no member of the Thackeray family was present. Apart from the state chief secretary P Subramaniam and city Police Commissioner R H Mendonca, top bureaucrats Ajit Warty, R C Iyer, K C Shrivastava, Nanasaheb Patil and Pratima Umarji also graced the occasion.