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Long stints in electoral politics and experience in handling key government departments are the hallmarks of Congress-NCP-Shiv Sena legislators who took oath as ministers with Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray at the Shivaji Park on Thursday, 28 November.
Thackeray is heading a coalition government, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), with the Sena, the Congress and the NCP.
Chhagan Bhujbal, Jayant Patil (both from the NCP), Balasaheb Thorat and Nitin Raut (both from the Congress), Eknath Shinde and Subhash Desai (both from the Sena) took oath as ministers along with Thackeray.
Here’s a closer look at all the ministers who took oath on Thursday.
Bhujbal (72) is a veteran figure in Maharashtra politics, who has the rare distinction of being associated with all the three major non-BJP parties in the state.
A senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, Bhujbal had been a member of both the Shiv Sena and the Congress at different times.
Bhujbal, who represents the OBC community, cut his political teeth in the Shiv Sena. He served as the Mayor of Mumbai, a Sena bastion, two times - 1985-86 and 1990-91.
He quit the Sena in 1991, causing quite a stir in state politics, and joined the Congress.
Bhujbal resigned from the Congress in 1999 and sided with Sharad Pawar, who formed the NCP the same year.
He became deputy chief minister in December 2008 and held key portfolios, such as home affairs and public works in the Congress-NCP government.
Jayant Patil (57) is perceived as a leader with a clean image. He took charge of the NCP's Maharashtra unit, replacing Sunil Tatkare, in April 2018, ahead of the crucial Lok Sabha and state Assembly polls.
The NCP retained its tally in the 2019 April Lok Sabha election and fared better in the October Assembly polls, but the credit largely went to his boss, Pawar.
Being part of a motley alliance of once-rival and ideologically divergent parties, Patil, known for composed demeanour, will be one of the key leaders who will be seen doing the trapeze act to ensure the three-party government sustains.
Shinde (55) is the most prominent face of the Sena in the adjoining Thane city, from where he has been elected consecutively four terms to the Assembly.
Considered a troubleshooter in the Sena, Shinde was the PWD minister in the previous BJP-led government (2014-19).
One of the confidants of Uddhav Thackeray, Desai (77) is currently an MLC. The senior-most member of the cabinet had been a member of the Assembly three times.
Now serving his third term in the upper house of the legislature, Desai was the industries minister in the 2014-19 BJP-Sena government.
Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat (66) took charge of the party's state unit at a difficult time.
When Thorat became the Maharashtra Congress chief in July this year, the party was already staring down the barrel after its Lok Sabha poll debacle in the state, once its citadel.
It could win only one seat in the general election and was relegated to inferior position than its ally, the NCP.
The Congress (44) though fared better in the Assembly elections, winning two more seats than its 2014 tally.
The result may not be satisfactory for the party, which led the state several times in the past, a trusted lieutenant of the party's central leadership, Thorat ensured proper co-ordination in the state unit hit by factionalism.
He became a minister of state in 1999 and was promoted as a cabinet minister in 2004. The Congress legislature party leader has held revenue, agriculture, water conservation and protocol portfolios in the past.
A key leader of the Congress from its erstwhile bastion of Vidarbha in eastern Maharashtra, Raut (62) is a four-term MLA.
Hailing from Nagpur, Raut, too, comes with past experience in government. He has held animal husbandry, employment guarantee and water conservation departments so far.
(With PTI inputs)
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