Devendra Fadnavis, BJP legislature party leader, will be sworn-in as the new chief minister of Maharashtra on Thursday evening at a grand ceremony in Mumbai. NCP head Ajit Pawar and Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde are also expected to take oath as deputy chief ministers. This is for the third time that Fadnavis will be sworn-in as the CM of Maharashtra. The swearing-in ceremony will be held at the Azad Maidan in south Mumbai, where elaborate security arrangements have been made. The formation of the government under Fadnavis comes after two weeks of intense negotiations following the November 20 state assembly polls. Fadnavis, joined by Shinde and Pawar, met with state Governor CP Radhakrishnan to formally stake claim to form the government. Following this meeting, the governor extended an invitation for Fadnavis to lead the new government. The swearing-in ceremony will be a grand affair with nearly 42,000 attendees, including PM Modi, several Union ministers, and chief ministers and deputy CMs of various states.
Hours before the ceremony, Saini visited the Valmiki Bhawan and offered prayers at a gurdwara and the Mansa Devi temple in Panchkula.
Two days after being sworn in as Maharashtra Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday took oath as an MLA along with deputy CMs Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, while the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi boycotted the ceremony alleging EVM misuse.
Senior BJP leader and Patnagarh MLA KV Singh Deo and debutant from Nimapara assembly segment Pravati Parida took oath as deputy chief ministers.
Barring a few, such as Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu (74), Union Minister C R Patil (69) and Uttar Pradesh Finance Minister Suresh Khanna (71), most other ministers attending the WEF represent the next generation of India's politicians.
The meeting was convened in the backdrop of the ruling Mahayuti's below par performance in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections.
As suspense over who will become the next Chief Minister of Maharashtra continues, Nationalist Congress Party leader Chhagan Bhujbal on Sunday backed his party's chief, Ajit Pawar, for the top post.
Maurya's remarks assume significance as they came barely a couple of weeks after his statement that the party organisation will always be bigger than the government caused a flutter.
Naidu proposed to meet at Reddy's place to address unresolved bifurcation issues.
"It is just that Fadnavis and I have swapped our chairs. Only Ajit Pawar's chair is fixed," said Shinde, who was the CM before the assembly elections with Fadnavis and Pawar as his deputies then.
Amid intense discussions among Mahayuti allies over the distribution of portfolios and Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena's insistence on the home ministry, the clarity on the composition of the council of ministers is expected by Sunday, sources said.
Seemingly expressing his displeasure against ministers demanding three more deputy chief minister posts in Karnataka, state Congress president D K Shivakumar on Tuesday said the party would respond to them appropriately.
The development comes a day after a government resolution (GR) was issued, in which the state administration ordered disbursal of Rs 10 crore funds for strengthening the state Waqf Board.
Discordant voices emerged on Sunday from the Mahayuti even as the alliance continued to remain in the throes of government formation more than week after it swept the Maharashtra assembly polls.
Saini's elevation as Haryana chief minister fits in with a pattern that has gathered pace in the BJP after the Congress and its allies like the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar began making an aggressive bid to woo the largest group of communities and politically most significant, especially in Hindi-speaking states, by pushing for a caste census.
Ahead of the Maharashtra assembly polls, Union home minister Amit Shah has met Chief Minister Eknath Shinde as well as Deputy CMs Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.
Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan administered the oath of office to 61-year-old Netam at a function held at the Raj Bhawan in Raipur.
Chief ministers of states like Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka were among those who raised the issue of loan waver scheme for farmers.
The BJP retained power in MP in the November 17 polls emphatically winning 163 seats in the 230-member assembly, leaving the Congress a distant second with 66 seats.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance on Saturday retained power in Maharashtra, pocketing a whopping 230 of the 288 assembly seats, as the Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi's dream of wresting power fizzled, with the opposition combine managing to garner just 50 seats.
The massive victory of Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti in Maharashtra indicates a tactical course correction post the Lok Sabha debacle, with factors like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's active role in the poll campaign, Ladki Bahin scheme, rise in women voting, and subtle message of Hindutva playing a crucial role.
'There are differences over certain issues between the JD-U and BJP but we are in alliance and continuing.'
Eight Union ministers, two former chief ministers and one ex-governor are among those who are set to test their electoral fate in the first phase of elections on April 19 when 102 seats across 21 states and Union territories will go to polls.
Kejriwal's unexpected announcement kicked up a strong buzz over the names of his wife Sunita and his ministers Atishi and Gopal Rai as his possible replacement.
Bharatiya Janata Party legislature party leader Devendra Fadnavis was sworn-in as new chief minister of Maharashtra while allies Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar took oath as deputy CMs at a grand ceremony in Mumbai on Thursday evening.
The appointments holds significance as a large number of senior leaders, who had no organisational post currently, have now been given new responsibilities.
4,809 members of the electoral college comprising MPs and MLAs set to elect the successor to incumbent Ram Nath Kovind.
Violence erupted in the central Maharashtra city of Parbhani after a replica of the Constitution was vandalized. Around 50 people have been detained for the protests, while a man with mental health issues has been arrested for allegedly damaging the replica. Opposition leaders condemned the incident, calling for strict action against those responsible. The situation is under control, but tensions remain high in the city.
'The BJP will use Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha to check Nitish Kumar.' 'They will not allow him to function freely as before.'
Ajit Pawar's NCP, a constituent of Mahayuti, was winning or leading in 41 of the 59 seats it contested as per the latest figures released by the Election Commission.
Various constituents of the INDIA bloc condemned Kejriwal's arrest and claimed that the BJP is scared of the outcome of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls and acting out of panic to create problems for the opposition.
Interestingly, among all the six former CMs, only Fadnavis, the first BJP leader to hold the top post in the state, completed full five-year term.
Hours after Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar president Sharad Pawar said that the Maha Vikas Aghadi allies can not demand that a Leader of Opposition must be appointed as they do not have the required numbers, Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray leader Bhaskar Jadhav on Saturday claimed there is no provision in the law which talks about the appointment of the LoP in legislature merely on the strength of the party.
'If you stay out of power for long, you become irrelevant, your party members become restless and start looking to jump ship.'
Zirwal and the others were protesting against the inclusion of the Dhangar community in the quota for tribals.
The results in Karnataka were declared on May 13 but the party has not finalised its chief ministerial face yet and the process of consultations is on.
Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, who is contesting from Pulivendula constituency is the son of former CM YS Rajasekhar Reddy.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The BJP lost 15 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. Union ministers have been deployed in all 15, tasked with turning the result around.
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