In the presence of chief minister Eknath Shinde and current deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Ajit Pawar took the oath of office as the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra on Sunday at Raj Bhavan. He and BJP leader and deputy CM Fadnavis will share the position.
Chhagan Bhujbal, a senior leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), also took the oath of office as Maharashtra minister.
The other MLAs who are supposed to be included are Dilip Walse Patil, Hassan Mushrif, Dharmarao Baba Atram, Aditi Sunil Tatkare, Sanjay Bansode, Anil Patil and Dhananjay Munde.
His confirmation as the agent CM fully backed up by no less than 30 MLAs, as he guaranteed, shows that he will probably part with the Sharad Pawar-drove party.
This comes not long after Ajit assembled a critical conference of NCP MLAs on Sunday.
Ajit met with NCP legislators earlier in the day and is likely to join the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance with at least 30 MLAs. The NCP altogether has 54 MLAs.
A gathering was held at Ajit’s true home Devgiri in Mumbai, where numerous senior chiefs and lawmakers, including NCP working president Supriya Sule and Praful Patel, were available. Without addressing the reporters, Sule left the residence.
NCP president Sharad Pawar, who was in Pune, said he knew nothing about the gathering, however added that Ajit, as head of the resistance in the Get together, can assemble a conference of lawmakers.
This happens almost a month after Sharad Pawar named Praful Patel, a senior party colleague, and Supriya Sule, Ajit’s daughter, as the new working presidents of the party. Ajit had offered to resign as Leader of Opposition in order to take on more organisational responsibilities.
Even though he refuted media reports that he was “unhappy” after Sule and Patel were made working presidents of the organisation, Ajit was rumoured to be unhappy about being denied the position of state unit chief for the party.
“He has no interest left in continuing in the opposition leader position and wants to show the people how to run the party,” Ajit said on June 21 of his desire to serve as president of Maharashtra. He demanded it shortly after Sule was promoted to working president.