Major ministries must remain with BJP: Tawde

KOLHAPUR: Senior BJP leader and state education minister Vinod Tawde on Thursday indicated that his party was in no mood to offer either the deputy chief minister's post or portfolios such as home, general administration and the urban development departments to the Shiv Sena.
"In our opinion, the home and urban development ministries must remain with the BJP since we have a strength of 122 MLAs in the assembly.Maharashtra is among the fastest urbanising states in the country with almost half of its population living in cities. In this backdrop, we may not afford to create multiple portfolios dealing with urbanisation issues. Hence, the urban development department is with the chief minister only," Tawde said during his visit to the city.
In the erstwhile Congress-NCP government, the UDD was under the chief minister's capacity.
Besides home, UDD and general administration department, the BJP is also keen on avoiding creating deputy chief minister's post. "Deputy chief minister's post is not constitutional. Our party has made it clear that to take speedy decisions, there must be only a chief minister instead of appointing a deputy to him," Tawde said.
Welcoming the Shiv Sena's decision to join the government, he said the assembly session to be held in Nagpur this week will represent true mandate of the state's people.
Tawde ducked the question on whether the BJP was 'relieved' after Shiv Sena's decision to join them and said that the government is concentrating on addressing issues of common people.
The BJP had attracted heavy criticism from the Congress and Shiv Sena after the NCP's unconditional support to the government.
Criticizing the previous government, Tawde said the Congress and NCP dragged the state into a bad financial condition. "We have a loan of Rs 3 lakh crore and financial deficit of Rs 22,000 crore. The previous government had announced schemes to gain political popularity. However, most of the schemes did not have financial planning. The biggest challenge before us is to strengthen the financial condition of Maharashtra," he said.
No vacancy for smaller parties? It appears that smaller parties such as Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghtana (SSS) and Rashtriya Samaj Paksh (RSP) may have to wait further to get ministerial berths in the government. Tawde said these parties can be included in the government during the next Cabinet expansion which is likely after the winter session of the state assembly. While the RSP has one MLA, SSS does not a single one the state. However, SSS leader MP Raju Shetty has been consistently claiming that the BJP had assured one ministerial berth to the party in the government.