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Joshi brushes off revolt, goes ahead with cabinet reshuffle

Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi today reshuffled his 42-member ministry by inducting two ministers of cabinet rank and six ministers of state.

Two cabinet ministers -- the Shiv Sena's Ganesh Naik and Govindrao Choudhary from the Bharatiya Janata Party -- have been dropped; four ministers of state -- Jagdish Gupta, Dilip Kamble and Govardhan Sharma from the BJP and the Sena's Gulabrao Gawade -- have been axed as well.

Addressing a news conference, Joshi said one more minister will be inducted on Friday.

The new cabinet ministers being inducted are former Bombay mayor Diwakar Raote (Sena) and former minister of state Arjun Tulsiram Pawar (BJP). The ministers of state to be inducted are Prataprao Ganpatrao Jadhav, Vijay Girker, Prataprao Mohite-Patil, brother of senior Congress leader and former minister Vijaysingh Mohite-Patil (all Sena), Vinayakrao Korde and D B Pawar-Patil (both BJP) and Dlip Sopal (Independent).

Among the six new faces Raote, Mohite-Patil and Girker are not members of either House of the state legislature. Joshi said the list of the new ministers has been sent to Governor Dr P C Alexander. The new ministers will be sworn in on Saturday at 1700 hours at a ceremony at Raj Bhavan.

Among the new ministers, Raote represents Bombay while Pawar represents Kalwan in north Maharashtra's Nashik district in the assembly. Among the new ministers of state Jadhav (Mehekar) and Korde (Achalpur) represents the backward Vidharba region, while Sopal (Barshi) and Mohite-Patil (Solapur) are from western Maharashtra, and Pawar-Patil (Kinwat) represents the backward Marathwada region.

Joshi said earlier that the reshuffle will be a minor one as he did not want to have a jumbo ministry.

It will basically be a reshuffle of portfolios to impart further efficiency in the functioning of the ministry so as to ensure speedy implementation of the Sena-BJP vachan nama (poll promises) and other welfare and development programmes which were announced after the alliance took over the reigns of the state three years ago.

Joshi earlier declined to comment on reports appearing in the press about the reported defiance of his environment minister, Ganesh Naik, who has refused to resign from the ministry as asked by the chief minister.

The chief minister had reportedly asked Naik and Minister of State for Irrigation and Sports Gulabrao Gawande to resign Gawande submitted his resignation from the ministry and legislative assembly to Joshi on Tuesday.

Syed Firdaus Ashraf, UNI

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