Ashok Chavan, 37 more ministers take oath in Maharashtra

Mumbai, Nov 7: Ending a 16-day tussle between coalition partners the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Ashok Chavan took oath as the chief minister of Maharashtra Saturday evening along with 37 more ministers.

The new government has 18 ministers from the Congress and 20 from NCP, including Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal.

Maharashtra Governor S.C. Jamir administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers on the lawns of Raj Bhavan here.

There are 12 cabinet ministers from the Congress and 15 from the NCP.

Apart from Chavan, the cabinet ministers from Congress are Narayan Rane, Patangrao Kadam, Shivajirao Moghe, Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, Balasaheb Thorat, Harshvardhan Patil, Rajendra Darda, Naseem Khan, Suresh Shetty, Nitin Raut and Subhash Jhanak.

The NCP members of the cabinet are Bhujbal, R.R. Patil, Ajit Pawar, Jayant Patil, Ganesh Naik, Anil Deshmukh, Manohar Naik, Vijaykumar Gavit, Sunil Tatkare, Ramraje Naik-Nimbalkar, Laxmanrao Dhoble, Jaidutt Kshirsagar, Babanrao Pachpute, Rajesh Tope and Hasan Mushrif.

Eleven ministers of state - seven from the Congress and four from NCP - were also sworn-in. There are two women minister of state in the new council.

The Congress minister of states are Ranjit Kamble, Vijay Vadettivar, Padmakar Walvi, Ramesh Bagwe, Varsha Gaekwad and Abdul Sattar, while the NCP junior ministers are Bhaskar Jadhav, Prakash Solunkhe, Sachin Aher, Gulabrao Devkar and Fauzia Khan.

Following the assembly election results Oct 22, a bitter tug-of-war ensued between the Congress and the NCP over the power-sharing formula, which was resolved Thursday evening, paving the way for the formation of the new ministry.

--IANS