Senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal will be inducted into the Mahayuti Cabinet on Tuesday. The veteran leader and a prominent OBC face in Maharashtra was excluded from Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's cabinet in December last year.
The exclusion of Bhujbal, the MLA from Yeola in Nashik, from the cabinet had drawn public disappointment. He has served as a cabinet minister, including as deputy CM, in different governments in the past.
Bhujbal will be sworn in by Maharashtra Governor C P Radhakrishnan at Raj Bhavan.
The 77-year-old leader's entry in the cabinet follows the resignation of his party colleague, Dhananjay Munde, who stepped down as the food, civil supplies and consumer protection minister in March.
Munde resigned citing health reasons when his close aide Walmik Karad was named as a key accused in sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh murder case.
The ruling Mahayuti coalition consists of the BJP, the Shiv Sena and the NCP led by Deputy CM Ajit Pawar.
On being excluded from the Cabinet, Bhujbal had said he was upset by the decision. He claimed he had been excluded from the cabinet because he took on activist Manoj Jarange, who has been demanding reservations for the Maratha community in jobs and education.
In the first cabinet expansion of the Mahayuti government on December 15, Bhujbal and Dilip Walse Patil of NCP and Mungantiwar and Vijaykumar Gavit of BJP were left out of the cabinet.
"I am an ordinary political worker. It doesn't matter if I am sidelined or rewarded. Ministerial berths come and go, but he cannot be finished off," Bhujbal had said.