Chief Minister Eknath Shinde abruptly cancelled his visit to Delhi, ostensibly lined up to finalise the expansion of the Maharashtra cabinet after a meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah. “The chief minister has cancelled his Delhi visit,” confirmed the Chief Minister’s Office late on Wednesday evening. Cabinet expansion may not take place this week either, as Governor B S Koshyari is likely to be in the national capital on Thursday and Friday, while Shinde has planned a two-day visit (July 30 and 31) to north Maharashtra, Marathwada and parts of western Maharashtra, to review the ground-level situation in these areas after the damage caused by heavy rains and floods.
Insiders from the Shinde camp said because of the Union home minister’s prior engagements and the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament, he was unable to spare time for the meeting. Incidentally, Shinde was all set to fly alone to the national capital. A senior legislator from the Shinde camp claimed that the CM was disappointed to hear the declaration of the state BJP chief, Chandrakant Patil, at the party executive on July 23 that the BJP had made Shinde the CM ‘with a heavy heart’.
On Tuesday, CM Shine had said there was no problem in expanding the cabinet and it would be done soon. However, Fadnavis has kept mum on this issue. There is a mad rush in the BJP and Shinde camp for bagging ministerial berths, as the CM must limit his cabinet to 42 ministers, including cabinet ministers and ministers of state. In addition, Shinde and Fadnavis do not want to take any chances with the Supreme Court having convened the hearing on the Shiv Sena rigmarole to August 1 and asked the Eknath Shinde camp to file an affidavit in response to the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction’s plea seeking disqualification of the rebel MLAs. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India N V Ramana will be hearing half-a-dozen petitions - one set filed by the Shinde camp and the remaining by the Thackeray faction.
The CM’s visit, which would have been his sixth one since he took over on June 30, is crucial, as the legislators from his camp and the BJP are getting restless, as the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress have stepped up attacks against him over the delay in cabinet expansion. They have termed the two-member-helmed dispensation as ‘Vasu-Sapna’ running the government, especially in view of the fact that the state is gripped by a major crisis after heavy rains and floods. On his previous visit to the national capital, Shinde had waited for 12 hours to get appointments with top BJP leaders, including its national party president J P Nadda, but ended up returning to Mumbai without being able to do so.
