Mumbai: Eknath Shinde expanded his cabinet 41 days after taking oath as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Eighteen MLAs, including BJP's state unit president Chandrakant Patil, took oath as cabinet ministers at the Raj Bhavan in south Mumbai. Of the 18 ministers, nine each are from the BJP and Shinde factions. In which no woman has been included. As soon as he was sworn in, the number of members in the Maharashtra cabinet now stands at 20, which is not even half of the maximum figure of 43 members. Shinde was sworn in as CM and Devendra Fadnavis as deputy CM on June 30.

Governor BS Koshyari administered the oath of office to the ministers. The ceremony was scheduled to start at 11 am but was delayed by 15 minutes. The BJP's cabinet members are Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Chandrakant Patil, Vijaykumar Gavit, and Girish Mahajan, Suresh Khade, Ravindra Chavan, Atul Save and Mangalprabhat Lodha. Gulabrao Patil, Dada Bhuse, Sanjay Rathod, Sandeep Bhumre, Uday Samant, Tanaji Sawant, Abdul Sattar, Deepak Kesarkar and Shambhuraj Desai were among the members who took oath as ministers from the Shinde faction.

No minister of state took oath today, an aide of Shinde said. Later, there will be a cabinet expansion again. The BJP has inducted Lodha from Mumbai, while the Shinde faction has not inducted any MLA from there. Elections to the Mumbai Municipal Corporation are due this year.

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