Maha Cabinet expansion to take place on Monday, Ajit Pawar to be DY CM

Mumbai, Dec 29: The Maharashtra Cabinet expansion to take place on Monday at Vidhan Bhavan in Mumbai. With this the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar may return as Deputy Chief Minister of the state.

The state will witness an expansion of the cabinet that currently has only six members in addition to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. Ajit's return comes after a month he broke ranks to ally with the BJP and got a Deputy Chief Minister's rank in the Devendra Fadnavis's government who in a surprise early-morning ceremony took the oath and then quit hours before a Supreme Court-ordered floor test.

This was reportedly decided earlier this week after discussions between the Shiv Sena's Uddhav Thackeray and the NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who is Ajit Pawar's uncle. However, the Congress, the third party of the Maharashtra government allaince was not present at this meeting but was being kept in the loop.

Ajit, the 60-year-old NCP leader, was brought back to the party by his uncle Sharad Pawar, was also present when Uddhav Thackeray was sworn-in at the head of the Sena-Congress-NCP's Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance in November.

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has gave Ajit Pawar a clean chit in the multi-crore Vidarbha irrigation scam this month.