No women in 20-member Maharashtra cabinet as CM Eknath Shinde expands 41-day-old ministry

MUMBAI: Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde on Tuesday expanded his two-member ministry. However, the list did not include a single woman.
Several women politicians and women's rights activists slammed the exclusion of women members.
Shinde expanded his ministry 41 days after taking oath as the CM by inducting 18 ministers, nine each from his rebel Shiv Sena group and the BJP.
NCP MP Supriya Sule took to Twitter and said that this shows the BJP's mindset.
"Maharashtra was the first state in the country to give reservation for women. When 50 per cent of India's population is of women, they are not represented in the state cabinet," she said.


Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi tweeted a photo and said, "Spot a woman on the dais".


The BJP has 12 women legislators in the state, including one from the Legislative Council. The Shinde group has two women legislators and also the backing of an Independent woman MLA.
There are 28 women legislators in Maharashtra, including three from the Legislative Council.
Eighteen MLAs, including state BJP president Chandrakant Patil, were sworn in as cabinet ministers at Raj Bhavan in south Mumbai on Tuesday.

The strength of Maharashtra ministry has now gone up to 20, less than half the maximum allowed strength of 43. On June 30, Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister and Devendra Fadnavis took oath as deputy CM.
The new BJP ministers are Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Chandrakant Patil, Vijaykumar Gavit, Girish Mahajan, Suresh Khade, Ravindra Chavan, Atul Save and Mangalprabhat Lodha.
From the Shinde group, Gulabrao Patil, Dada Bhuse, Sanjay Rathod, Sandipan Bhumre, Uday Samant, Tanaji Sawant, Abdul Sattar, Deepak Kesarkar and Shambhuraj Desai were sworn in as ministers. No minister of state was sworn in today. There will be another ministry expansion later, an aide of Shinde said.