At the last minute, minutes before Union Home Minister Amit Shah arrived in Mumbai, Eknath Shinde consented to step in as deputy chief minister.
Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP was sworn in as Chief Minister on Thursday, ending two weeks of speculation about the new roles for the Mahayuti partners’ leaders after their spectacular return to power in Maharashtra. Former Chief Minister Eknath Shinde of the Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar of the NCP were sworn in as Deputy Chief Ministers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, and Chief Ministers Yogi Adityanath, Chandrababu Naidu, Nitish Kumar, Himanta Biswa Sarma, and Bhupendra Patel were among the celebrities who attended the ceremony at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan, where Governor C P Radhakrishnan administered the oath of office and secrecy to the three leaders. In addition, businessmen Mukesh Ambani and Kumar Mangalam Birla were there, along with actors Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Sanjay Dutt.
No other leader was given the oath of office, with the exception of the top three Mahayuti leaders, who won 230 of the 288 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly. This indicated that the partners were still negotiating the finalization of portfolios for the incoming team.
According to the regulations, the Chief Minister and no more than 43 other ministers may be a part of the state Cabinet.
