The Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, which came to power after a high-voltage political drama, is completing one month in office on Saturday, but there is still no clarity on when the cabinet expansion will take place.
Shinde took oath as chief minister on June 30, a day after Uddhav Thackeray was forced to step down from the post following a rebellion by the majority of Sena legislators led by Shinde. Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as deputy chief minister.
The government was formed 10 days after Shinde raised a banner of revolt against the Shiv Sena leadership. Forty out of 55 Sena MLAs sided with Shinde, which resulted in the collapse of the two-and-a-half-year-old Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) dispensation comprising the Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress.
After the collapse of the Thackeray government, it was widely speculated that Fadnavis would take over the reins of the state for the third time with the support of the Sena rebels. But Fadnavis sprang a surprise after he declared that Shinde would become the next chief minister and he himself would not be a part of the new government. But there was more surprise in store as some time later BJP’s top leadership asked Fadnavis to become a part of the government as deputy chief minister.
After coming to power, the Shinde government has fast-tracked the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project, which was kept on the back burner by the previous Thackeray-led dispensation. Two weeks back, Fadnavis had said that all clearances to expedite the project have been given. The new government also gave a cabinet approval to rename Aurangabad and Osmanabad cities as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv respectively. The decision to rename these cities had been taken in the MVA government’s last cabinet meeting held on June 29, just before Thackeray resigned.
However, Shinde and Fadnavis had said the MVA dispensation’s decision to rename these places was illegal as it was taken by it after the governor had asked it to prove majority in the state Legislative Assembly. Shinde restored the pension scheme meant for the political activists who were imprisoned during the Emergency imposed in 1975. The decision, taken by the Fadnavis government, had been scrapped by the Thackeray dispensation.
With inputs from News18
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