Maharshtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan will hold a Cabinet meeting on Thursday — the first after Ajit Pawar’s resignation. Though the cabinet meeting called at 9.30 am on Thursday will last not more than an hour because of President Pranab Mukherjee’s Mumbai visit, it is still expected to produce some fireworks between the ruling parties — the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party.
Despite not being in the cabinet anymore, Mr Pawar on Wednesday convened a meeting of NCP ministers to discuss the party’s strategy for the cabinet meeting.
“All 19 NCP ministers were present in the meeting to decide the line of action of the NCP ministers in Thursday’s cabinet meeting,” informed a source from the NCP.
By holding the meeting, Mr Pawar has also demonstrated that he will be the biggest leader of the NCP in the state legislature although he is not in the cabinet. “Some of the senior ministers were not happy with the meeting,” the NCP source informed.
President Mukherjee will arrive in Mumbai at noon and the CM will receive him at the airport, indicating that the cabinet meeting will be over before 10.30 am.
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Pawar showed courage: uddhav
Mumbai: Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday said Ajit Pawar “showed courage” to step down as deputy chief minister of Maharashtra only after files pertaining to various scams gutted in the fire.
A fire at Mantralaya on June 21 has destroyed a large number of files. “He knows that the files relating to various scams perished in the Mantralaya fire,” Mr Thackeray told a gathering of RPI workers.