Chief Minister Eknath Shinde named Guardian Ministers for 12 districts in the state, and Deputy CM Ajit Pawar was appointed the Guardian Minister of his home district, Pune, here on Wednesday.
An apparently sulking Ajit Pawar is said to have had his way on the issue, and seven of his ministers are also given new Guardian Minister responsibilities, according to party sources.
With Ajit Pawar’s appointment, the current Guardian Minister of Pune, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Chandrakant Patil, has been given the same charge for Solapur and Amravati districts.
The other BJP leaders and their respective Guardian Ministerships are: Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil (Akola), Dr. Vijaykumar Gavit (Bhandara), and Sudhir Mungantiwar (Wardha).
From Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party faction, the new appointees as Guardian Ministers for different districts are: Dilip Walse-Patil (Buldhana), Hasan Mushrif (Kolhapur), Dharmarao Baba Atram (Gondia), Dhananjay Munde (Beed), Anil Patil (Nandurbar) and Sanjay Bansode (Parbhani).
The issue of Guardian Ministers had been hanging for some time, leading to friction among the three ruling allies, Shiv Sena-BJP-NCP (AP), but now it seems to have been resolved, even as the elections to the civic bodies, Lok Sabha and Assembly loom large.
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