Maharashtra recently got a young cabinet with 18 new faces, including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, with an average age of 55.38 years.
In the cabinet reshuffle held in Nagpur on Sunday, 13 former ministers were dropped, with NCP’s Aditi Tatkare becoming the youngest minister at 36 years and BJP’s Ganesh Naik the oldest. There are four women in the Council of Ministers, more than one in the previous regime.
The number of new faces in the cabinet is 42.8 percent. While the BJP has eight new faces out of 20 ministers including the CM, five of them are cabinet ministers and three are ministers of state (MoS). The new faces are Nitesh Rane, Shivendraraje Bhosale, Jayakumar Gore, Sanjay Savkare, Akash Phundkar, Madhuri Misal, Pankaj Bhoyer and Meghna Bordikar as state ministers.
From the Shiv Sena, the list of first-time ministers has six with four cabinet ranks — Pratap Sarnaik, Sanjay Sreesat, Bharat Gogawale and Prakash Abitkar. There are two ministers of state – Yogesh Kadam and Ashish Jaiswal. It is important to note that Bharat Gogawa served as Chief Whip of Shiv Sena in the previous government.
Similarly, the NCP has four new faces as ministers including Narahari Jirwal, Makarand Patil and Cabinet-level Babasaheb Patil and Minister of State Indranil Naik. In the past, Jirwal held the important constitutional post of Deputy Speaker in the government of Mahavikas Aghadi.
The representation of women in the Council of Ministers has also increased from one to four in the previous government. However, female representation remains at 10 percent. Two of the four are cabinet ministers – BJP’s Pankaja Munde and NCP’s Aditi Tatkare. The other two are BJP ministers of state – Madhuri Misal and Meghna Bordikar.
Talking to the media in Nagpur, CM Fadnavis said, “Our effort was to retain veterans on merit and give adequate representation to new candidates. Also, we have ensured an inclusive cabinet representing all regions, castes and communities.”
Responding to the issue of 10 percent representation of women in the Council of Ministers, he said, ‘There was a woman minister in the previous government. Now, we have four. It is 300 percent more.” He assured to ensure more representation of women in the future.
The average age of Fadnavis-led ministers is 55.38, while the average age of cabinet ministers, including the chief minister and two deputy prime ministers, is 57.02. The average age of the six MoS is 45.5 years.
The average age of BJP ministers – 20 including the CM – is the lowest at 54.5 years, followed by Shinde-led Shiv Sena’s 55.16 years and NCP-led Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s 57.4 years. Among the three party leaders, CM Devendra Fadnavis, 54, Eknath Shinde, 60, and Ajit Pawar, 65, have been made into a cabinet of 42 ministers.
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