Zeeshan Shaikh

According to the ruling coalition’s arrangement, the Shiv Sena’s quota is 15, including the Chief Minister, the NCP’s 16 and the Congress’s 12. The NCP has seven dynasts as Ministers, including Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, followed by the Shiv Sena with three.

On Monday, Nawab Malik and Hasan Mushrif of the NCP and Aslam Shaikh of the Congress were sworn-in as Cabinet ministers.

Even Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray seemed a little surprised that he and his two new-found allies, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), had managed to achieve what they had.

Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari Tuesday night invited Uddhav Thackeray to take the oath of office and secrecy at 6.40 pm on Thursday at the Shivaji Park in Dadar after he received a letter from the Maha Vikas Aghadi which stated it had the support of 166 MLAs.

Running out of options and facing defeat in the trust vote after NCP leader Ajit Pawar resigned as Deputy Chief Minister following the Supreme Court order, Fadnavis too threw in the towel, saying he no longer had majority — the shortest tenure of a government in Maharashtra.

Ajit had last week seemingly brought down the curtains on his association with NCP, by dramatically breaking away from family, dynasty and the political legacy of his uncle to chart an independent course as an ally of the BJP.

His MLAs fearful of Ajit whip, Sharad Pawar says not one of them will be disqualified.

Claiming that most of its MLAs are in touch with the party, the NCP on Sunday released separate videos and statements by four of its MLAs. The MLAs are among the five, apart from Ajit Pawar, whom the party could not make contact with until Saturday.

While Ajit is embracing a strategy remarkably similar to the one used by Pawar, who had rebelled against his mentor Vasantdada Patil to form his own government in the 70s, the similarity between the two ends there.

Ajit, who considered himself the heir-apparent to the NCP chief, had to brush aside calls that he was insecure about his cousin Supriya Sule’s entry into electoral politics in the 2009 Parliamentary elections.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar announces consensus on Shiv Sena chief as Maharashtra Chief Minister; Uddhav Thackeray says other issues being sorted out.

Ties with BJP have been strained. But is that what explains the Shiv Sena going for broke in Maharashtra? Or is it part of the churning within the party, seeking to expand its base and in midst of a generation change, seven years after Bal Thackeray’s death? The Indian Express report on a new Maharashtra power balance

At least two senior Congress leaders, told The Indian Express that they expected a deadlock and that the state could be heading for a spell of President’s Rule.

Earlier, the BJP, the single-largest party with 105 seats, and invited first by the Governor, expressed its unwillingness to stake claim for government formation.

The youngest of nine siblings, Ansari spent much of his life in Mumbai before moving to Dubai in 2008 to work at a printing press. Two years into his job, he was arrested when he returned on vacation.

Manmad faces a perennial water crisis. The crisis hit its peak in summer this year, when the Waghdardi dam, from which the city gets its water supply, dried up completely.

Maharashtra is in the middle of an agrarian crisis with 54.22 lakh hectares of the total 138.82 lakh hectares under kharif sowing damaged in the unexpected post-monsoon rain that the state received in the last week of October.

Only a month ago, the 68-year-old farmer, who has been working on the farm since she was 16, was readying herself for a bumper tomato crop. But the extended wet weather in Maharashtra, coupled with the two-day rain in the last leg of October, has literally “poured cold water” on her dreams.

A former PR professional-turned-politician, Shaikh had made his electoral debut in 2012 in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation election and won from Govandi.