Thackeray would be taking over as chief minister more than a month after results of the Maharashtra Assembly elections were declared on October 24.
Union Agriculture Minister Pawar, a former president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and also the International Cricket Council, has shown interest in contesting the election, according to incumbent MCA president Ravi Savant.
The 36 new ministers included 10 cabinet and four ministers of state (MoS) of the NCP, eight Cabinet and four MoS of the Sena, and eight Cabinet and two MoS of the Congress.
'Getting Brijbhushan to rake up Thackeray's anti-north Indian stand is the BJP's way of cutting Raj Thackeray to size.' 'Could just one MP have stopped Raj Thackeray's Ayodhya tour?'
The Maharashtra chief minister is here to stay for the time being, that's the message to party members. The Congress is in no hurry to replace him or rush into campaign mode, says N Suresh.
The chief minister strongly condemned the terror strikes and asked people not to believe in rumours. Deshmukh assured people that his government would take stringent action against the culprits involved in the attacks.
The Congress's master strategist is so incredibly popular and resourceful that even Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa regretted his arrest. That's the secret of D K Shivakumar's success, says Aditi Phadnis.
Gopinath Munde came up the hard way and never forgot his roots. Just when he seemed destined for bigger things, death snatched him away.
Maharashtra today faces an acute water crisis. But all that Devendra Fadnavis is concerned about who is not chanting slogans like Bharat Mata Ki Jai, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
He is among the contenders for the top job in the event the BJP gets fewer seats in 2019. That may have something to do with him picking up the cudgels for Sushma Swaraj when many in the party kept mum, says Aditi Phadnis.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on Thursday said there is no hostage-like situation at any hotel where people have locked themselves in their rooms for safety after the attack by terrorists on Wednesday.
While I&B Minister Manish Tewari seems desperate for the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat, the Congress leadership is having a tough time choosing the right candidates. Anita Katyal reports
'The same instinct that thinks that women should remain at home and not be at the workplace, objects to the dance bar.'
Less than a fortnight after rejecting the Adarsh scam report, Maharashtra cabinet on Thursday decided to partially accept recommendations of the judicial commission, announcing action against indicted bureaucrats but appeared going soft on politicians named by the commission.
"The size of the ministry would either be smaller or remain the same as that of former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh," the Maharashtra CM said.
Ignoring controversies surrounding him over Adarsh housing scam, the Congress has decided to field ex-Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan for the Lok Sabha polls and has fielded Madhusudan Mistry, a close aide of party vice president Rahul Gandhi to take on Narendra Modi in Vadodara. Anita Katyal reports
'The UPA was the gang that couldn't shoot straight. The NDA is the gang that can't stop shooting. They (the Modi government) are shooting at anybody, everybody, all directions, shooting themselves in the foot.'
Rane accused the Congress of reneging on its promise of making him the CM after he joined the party 12 years ago.
In fresh trouble for former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan, the Election Commission on Sunday slapped a showcause notice on him for failing to lodge his election expenses as per law in a paid news case and asked him why he should not be disqualified.
Devendra Fadnavis -- who completes a year as Maharashtra's chief minister this weekend -- knows his rivals in the party remain hungry for power and want to seize every opportunity to pull him down, says Neeta Kolhatkar.
The much-hyped 'clean chit' to Congress leader Ashok Chavan is particularly embarrassing as the party had been forced to sack him after the Adarsh scam surfaced, says Anita Katyal
The final figure of polling could increase and it will be available on Tuesday, officials said.
'Haven't you heard of the magical EVM machines? They can negate all our votes.' 'There is no hope. Modi is India's Putin.'
After embarrassing his own government by publicly thrashing its ordinance on convicted legislators in public, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday trained his guns at the Maharashtra government for rejecting the Adarsh Inquiry Commission report.
'If enough of us take up the issue with their elected representatives, politicians will get the message.'
'Neither the Congress nor the BJP has the political will to take on the Sanatan Sanstha.'
the BJP have offered support to Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, who is contesting for the post of president on behalf of the Pawar-Bal Mahaddalkar group, while the Shiv Sena is firmly behind the 'Cricket First' group, headed by Vijay Patil, son of Congressman D Y Patil.
'Since Pranab Mukherjee is the Custodian of the Constitution, he should present practical ideas to solve the problems he has been so outspokenly highlighting,' feels Sudheendra Kulkarni.
It is a fight for survival for the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra, which has been its citadel. In an interview party President Sharad Pawar speaks on the NCP's prospects and how the Bharatiya Janata Party is exploiting Narendra Modi's popularity in the state assembly elections.
'For short-term gain, the BJP makes extraordinary promises, they take extraordinary decisions, but in the long term it is going to impact both them and the country.'
'No one talks about the Mumbai riots anymore, though like Delhi 1984, the guilty have not been punished. In Gujarat, many powerful leaders of the state's ruling party are in jail for their role in the riots... In Mumbai, only one politician of the Shiv Sena, a former MP, was convicted of hate speech, along with two other Shiv Sainiks, one of whom was a corporator and the other a junior functionary... So why the apathy? Could it be because despite these statistics and the widely-publicised findings of the Srikrishna Commission, what remained in public consciousness was the violence by the Muslims, thanks to a highly efficient Sena propaganda machine? There's no demand for it, but would an SIT probe into the closed cases of the Mumbai riots help today?' The fadeout of Mumbai's riots from public debate can be called a triumph of the communal State, argues Jyoti Punwani.
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