Within two days after the expansion of the cabinet in Maharasthra, a rift has cropped up in the Congress camp as senior leaders of the party are unhappy over allocation of portfolios, reports Times Now.
#Breaking | Rift between @INCIndia ministers over Maharashtra cabinet portfolio.
Fight over PWD ministry between @AshokChavanINC & @bb_thorat.
CM @OfficeOfUT to take the final call.
Details by TIMES NOW’s Aruneel. Listen in. pic.twitter.com/Kv2vNvBdys
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) January 1, 2020
According to reports, a rift broke out within the party over the cabinet minister selection and portfolio of those ministers. Senior Congress party leader Ashok Chavan has reportedly demanded powerful ministeries of either Revenue or Public Works Department in the new cabinet causing a conflict with Balasaheb Thorat, who currently holds Revenue portfolio. Senior Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde has been allocated with the PWD ministry along with the Home department. When CM Uddhav Thackeray had taken over as CM of Maharashtra, he had inducted only 6 ministers. As a result, all of them hold several portfolios, most of which will be distributed among the new ministers now.
On Monday, there were also reports that a disagreement had occurred between factions of Congress over the inclusion of ministers in the Uddhav Thackeray-led government. It is reported that senior party leaders, including former Chief Ministers Prithviraj Chavan, Sushil Kumar Shinde, and leader Amin Patel, were purportedly disappointed over missing out on being ministers in the new Maharashtra coalition government.
The rift is not just limited to the Congress party but there is also some dissatisfaction among leaders of Shiv Sena regarding the allocation of portfolios in the government.
Even senior Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut, one of the prominent faces of the party during the recent power tussle in Maharashtra, had skipped the oath-taking ceremony of state cabinet ministers on Monday, fuelling speculation of internal bickering.
Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamana also published an article alleging that the Maharashtra cabinet expansion has caused discontent among the party ranks who lost on the ministerial berths to accommodate the Independent legislators from Sena quota.
Validating the dissatisfaction brewing among some members of the Shiv Sena, the Saamana editorial asserted that “Original Shiv Sainiks lost ministerial berth due to induction of three independent legislators through Sena quota”. The executive editor of Saamana is firebrand politician Sanjay Raut, who is considered as a chief architect of the alliance stitched up between the Shiv Sena, Congress and the NCP.
On Sunday, 36 Maha Vikas Aghadi leaders took oath as ministers in the newly-formed Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra government during the state Cabinet expansion ceremony. Out of the 36 ministers, 26 were sworn-in as cabinet minister while 10 were inducted as ministers of state.
Ajit Pawar, Dhananjay Munde, Anil Deshmukh, Hassan Mushrif, Ashok Chavan, Jitendra Awhad, and Amit Deshmukh were the prominent leaders who took oath on Sunday.
