First meeting of Chavan's Council of Ministers held in Maharashtra

Mumbai, Nov 8 : The first meeting of the 38-member council of Ministers in Maharashtra held today decided to recommend to the government to hold a three-day session of the newly formed State Assembly from tomorrow.

The three-day session would also see election of the new Speaker and address by Governor S C Jamir to the newly elected members in which he would mention the programme of the government over the next five years, besides oath taking by the 287 new members on the first two days. The motion of thanks to the Governor's address would come up during the winter session to be held in Nagpur next month, official sources here said.

A sense of bonhomie prevailed at the Cabinet meeting where the new ministers were introduced, the sources said.

Senior legislator of the Assembly and leader of the Peasants and Workers' Party Ganpatrao Deshmukh will be the Protem Speaker and he would administer the oath to the new members of the Assembly.

The portfolios of the ministers are likely to be announced in the evening.

The Ashok Chavan Ministry was sworn in by the Governor yesterday evening after a 17-day delay in ministry formation because both parties were not seeing eye to eye on number of ministerial berths and certain key portfolios like home and finance. Mr Chavan had told the Governor that the alliance had support of 170 MLAs, including 26 independents.

The Ministry included 27 Cabinet ministers and 11 ministers of state. While the NCP had 20 ministers, the Congress had 18. Mr Chavan had earlier indicated that the Congress ministers would be sworn in in two phases.

--UNI

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