Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday took the oath as the 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 Fadnavis the oath.
With Thursday's swearing-in, Fadnavis has begun 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 likely to expand his cabinet on December 11 or 12 before the winter session of the state legislature commences on December 16 at Nagpur.
The swearing-in ceremony began with national anthem and Maharashtra Song at 5.30 pm and ended with that at 5.45 pm.
Eknath Shinde, who was so unwilling till this morning, stepped into the Deputy Chief Minister to heed to the calls by Fadnavis and a long litany of Shiv Sena leaders.
The other union ministers who were present included Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Shivraj Chouhan, JP Nadda (BJP president) along with Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Bhupendra Yadav, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Chirag Paswan, HD Kumaraswamy, and Ramdas Athavale.
Chief Ministers of state ruled by BJP and allies were also present including 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.
More than 40,000 people attended the function and 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.
Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Ranvir 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 a part of the grand ceremony.
At the function, over 300 saints, influencers, professionals including doctors and chartered accountants and Bollywood stars and Marathi film actors also attended.
Security has been beefed in and around Azad Maidan situated near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in South Mumbai. Over 5,000 police personnel have been deployed in addition to teams of state reserve police force, anti-riots force and rapid action force.
Five more police commissioners, 15 deputy commissioners and 29 assistant commissioners have been entrusted with the task of looking after security arrangements and for incident-free swearing-in function. The police will also use drones to keep a close vigil.
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