Western Maharashtra walks with major share of ministry

Mumbai, Nov 7 : Western Maharashtra, the sugar belt of the state, was the largest gainer by walking away with 12 berths in the newly formed Maharashtra cabinet.

Of these 12 ministers, seven were from NCP.

The Marathwada got the Chief Minister's post for the second time. Marathwada region is holding the CM's post since 1999, barring the gap of over one year when Sushilkumar Shinde was the Chief Minister. The region has seven ministers, three from the Congress and four from the NCP.

The Vidarbha region got seven ministry of which two has gone in favour of NCP and remaining to Congress.

However, all important Mumbai city got four berths and the both the Congress and NCP shared two ministries each.

The adjoining Konkan region got 4 ministers out of which three were from NCP one from congress.

The North Maharashtra also got four ministries, including the Deputy Chief Cinister Chhagan Bhujbal. The NCP got three ministers while the Congress got one minister from the region.

However, as many as 22 ministers from the outgoing Ashok Chavan ministry were not inducted in the new cabinet. Among them were 13 Cabinet and nine Ministers of state. Notable among them were Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil, Ramesh Bang, Surupsingh Naik, Anees Ahmed, Ravisheth Patil, Madan Patil, Dr Sunil Deshmukh, Satish Patil, Shobha Bachchav, Siddhram Mhetre, while Suresh Warpudkar and Rana Jagjitsingh Patil of NCP, who were defeated.

The others were Dilip Deshmukh (brother of Vilasrao Deshmukh, Dilip Walse-Patil, Chandrakant Handore, Vimal Mundada, Rajendra Shingane, Nawab Malik, Jayprakash Dandegaonkar, Nana Panchbuddhe, Pritamkumar Shegaonkar and Vinay Kore.

Besides two women ministers, Mr Chavan had tried to give representation to other sections of the society like Dalits and Muslims in the Cabinet. Among them were Nitin Raut, Naseem Khan, Abdul Sattar, Hasan Mushreef, Laxman Dhoble, Shivajirao Moghe and Padmakar Walvi.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and his deputy Chhagan Bhujbal today expresed regret to the people of Maharashtra for the delay in formation of the government.

Addressing the media at Mantralaya here, both the leaders said ''We were discussing the government formation to give more stability to the people of Maharashtra for next five years that resulted in the delay,'' they said and added ''Our government will do the time bound implementation of the Congress-NCP manifesto.''

--UNI

(c) 2009 Published with permission from United News of India.
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