Pawar Unhappy About Cabinet Expansion & Appointments

Mumbai: Although Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar recently got supplementary demands worth Rs 47,000 crore cleared and has kept a tight hold over the state’s finances, he is not happy. The reason is the pending appointments in central and state cabinets and state-owned corporations, according to sources.

Ever since the NCP faction under Ajit Pawar joined the state government in July, the three constituents of the MahaYuti have been unstable. Now, the Ajit Pawar faction is said to be unhappy with the allocation of development funds.

Pawar has skipped several meetings in the past few days and appears to have kept away from public programmes ever since the Maratha quota issue started heating up. Recently he was diagnosed with dengue. However, he attended a family function and then directly left for Delhi to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Rajya Sabha member Praful Patel and Lok Sabha member Sunil Tatkare accompanied him on the visit.

The reason behind the urgent meeting was said to be the unavailability of funds, despite Pawar heading the finance portfolio, the sources said.

Against this backdrop a meeting of NCP MLAs is scheduled to take place at Pawar’s residence on November 21. Earlier it was decided that all MLAs should meet every Tuesday to discuss and sort out party issues. However, Pawar himself couldn’t attend the meeting for three weeks, the sources said.

Interestingly, the Eknath Shinde group had cited the same reason while breaking away from the MVA alliance last year. At the time, Pawar was the finance minister and deputy chief minister.