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Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday, December 5, took oath as Maharashtra Chief Minister for the third time amid a galaxy of NDA leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the grand ceremony.
Governor CP Radhakrishnan administered the oath.
Former Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and former Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar were sworn in as Deputy Chief Ministers in the Fadnavis Cabinet.
Fadnavis is expected to expand his cabinet on December 11 or 12 ahead of the upcoming winter session of the state legislature, starting from December 16 at Nagpur.
Eknath Shinde, who was reluctant until this morning, joined as the Deputy Chief Minister honoring the requests by Fadnavis and a host of Shiv Sena leaders.
Union ministers who attended the event included Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Shivraj Chouhan, JP Nadda (BJP president), Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Bhupendra Yadav, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Chirag Paswan, HD Kumaraswamy, and Ramdas Athavale among others.
Chief Ministers of states ruled by BJP and allies were also present. Yogi Adityanath, Nitish Kumar, N Chandrababu Naidu, Pramod Sawant, Mohan Yadav, Vishnu Deo Sai, Himanta Biswa Sarma, and Mohan Charan Majhi attended the event.
Over 40,000 people participated in the function, including Mukesh Ambani, Anant Ambani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Anil Ambani, Dilip Sanghavi, and Deepak Parekh.
Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Ranvir Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, and Madhuri Dixit also attended the ceremony.
Consul Generals of various countries were also present.
More than 10,000 Ladki Bahins, 2,000 farmers and 5,000 chairmen and secretaries of the cooperative societies apart from leaders and cadres from BJP, Shiv Sena and NCP had thronged the venue to be part of the grand ceremony.
Over 300 saints, influencers, professionals, including doctors and chartered accountants and Bollywood stars and Marathi film actors were also present at the function.
The security was beefed in and around Azad Maidan, situated near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in South Mumbai. More than 5,000 police personnel were deployed in addition to teams of state reserve police force, anti-riots force and rapid action force.
Five additional police commissioners, 15 deputy commissioners and 29 assistant commissioners were assigned to supervise security arrangements and for an incident-free swearing-in function. The police also used drones to keep a close vigil.
(Left to right: Devendra Fadnavis, Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar. Photo courtesy: IANS)
