Mumbai: Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan Tuesday administered the oath of office to five ministers of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and an Independent legislator.
This comes after the NCP leadership got its 20 ministers to submit their resignation letters four days ago in an effort to bring about some changes as part of its strategy to prepare for the parliamentary elections.
The portfolios allocated to the three cabinet ministers inducted today were: Madhukar Pichad - Tribal Development, Dilip Sopal (Independent) - Water Supply and Sanitation and Shashikant Shinde - Water Resources (Krishna Valley Irrigation Corporation).
The ministers of state were Suresh Dhas, Uday Samant and Sanjay Savkhare.
The new cabinet ministers come in the place of Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar, Babanrao Pachpute and Laxman Dhoble while ministers of state have replaced Bhaskar Jadhav, Prakash Solanke and Gulabra Devkar whose resignations were accepted recently.
Senior minister Chhagan Bhujbal, Ganesh Naik, Jayant Patil and Fawzia Khan who are continuing as ministers are likely to be fielded for parliamentary elections.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar is sprucing up his party for the general and assembly elections especially since several of his party leaders have come under fire for non-performance and corruption.
