Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday took the oath as the Maharashtra Chief Minister for the third time in presence of a horde of NDA leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Governor CP Radhakrishnan administered Fadnavis the oath.

With Thursday’s swearing-in, Fadnavis has started his 3.0 innings. Former Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and former Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar were sworn in as the Deputy Chief Minister in the Fadnavis-led council of ministers.

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.

Shinde, who was initially reluctant to join the cabinet, finally agreed after Fadnavis met him on Tuesday and Wednesday urging him to be part of the MahaYuti government, especially after the landslide victory. Shinde also yielded after a host of Shiv Sena leaders and former ministers requested him to be part of the system instead of remaining out focusing on strengthening the party organisation.

In the case of Ajit Pawar, he had already extended his party’s support to Fadnavis as the chief minister. In addition, on Wednesday, after Fadnavis staked a claim with the Governor for the government formation, Ajit Pawar announced he would take oath on Thursday notwithstanding Shinde’s dilly-dallying. Ajit Pawar created a record of becoming the Dy CM for the sixth time.

Union ministers including Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Shivraj Chouhan, J P Nadda (who is also BJP president), Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Bhupendra Yadav, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Chirag Paswan, H D Kumaraswamy, Ramdas Athavale were among others who were present on this occasion.

Chief Ministers of state ruled by BJP and allies were also present including Gujarat CM Bhupendra Patel, Yogi Adityanath, Nitish Kumar, N Chandrababu Naidu, Pramod Sawant, Mohan Yadav, Vishnu Deo Sai, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Mohan Charan Majhi among others were present at the function.

Over 40,000 people participated in the function while who’s who from industry including Mukesh Ambani, who was accompanied by Anant Ambani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Anil Ambani, Dilip Sanghavi, Deepak Parekh were present.

Film stars Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, and Madhuri Dikshit among others came in large numbers.

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 Hindi film 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 have been 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 will also use drones to keep a close vigil.

(With inputs from syndicated feed)