It has almost been a month since Uddhav Thackeray was sworn in as chief minister but he has not expanded his cabinet as yet. There were rumours earlier that the three coalition parties -- Shiv Sena, NCP and INC have not been able to come to a consensus on the division of seats and that is causing the delay.
Earlier in the day, a report by Times of India claims that the date for cabinet expansion was proposed to be December 23 or 24 but Congress high command is yet to approve the list of nominees.
The same report also goes on to note that there is friction over the post of Deputy Chief Minister and the home portfolio.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi government, which presently has a strength of six ministers - two each from Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress - plus, the CM, can have a maximum of 42 ministers. The other leaders include Congress’ Balasaheb Thorat and Nitin Raut, Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde and Subhash Desai and NCP’s Jayant Patil and Chhagan Bhujbal were also sworn in on November 28 along with the Cheif Minister. At that time, it was decided that the cabinet would be expanded immediately after the winter session of the state legislature, which ended on Saturday.
According to Shiv Sena mouthpiece, 'Saamna', the expansion now will take place on 30th December. However, there is no official confirmation on this.
Nawab Malik on Tuesday while talking to ANI said that his party workers want Ajit to become the deputy chief minister of the state. It is noteworthy that Ajit Pawar was the deputy CM also in the second term of Fadnavis government. Most people feel that it is almost certain that Ajit Pawar will get this role again, given that Congress already has managed to bag the position of Speaker of Lok Sabha.
In the past few weeks, Uddhav Thackeray has held a series of meetings with the Congress and the NCP to get his balancing act right. The big dilemma in Congress' case is to adjust two heavyweight former CMs - Ashok Chavan and Prithviraj Chavan.
So for now, the waiting game is on. Hopefully, we will get to see the new ministers sworn in before we step into 2020.