The choice of Congress leaders to represent Maharashtra in the Union Cabinet is being seen as a bid by the party leadership to counter NCP chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar with an eye on the forthcoming Assembly polls in the state. While former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who will be appointed as a Cabinet minister, is a known baiter of Pawar, second-term Sangli MP Pratik Patil, who will be sworn in as a Minister of State, is the grandson of former chief minister Vasantdada Patil, whose government Pawar had dislodged in 1978 to become the youngest CM of the state.

Pratik and Prithiviraj Chavan, who hails from Karad and will be a Minister of State with independent charge, both belong to Pawar’s pocketborough of western Maharashtra, where the NCP has suffered severe reverses, losing Shirur, Maval, Ahmednagar, Kolhapur and Hatkanangale seats in the LS elections.

Pratik, who is said to be close to Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, had also won the election despite a large section of the ruling NCP working against him in favour of an

independent candidate, Kavathe Mahankal MLA and former minister of state Ajitrao Ghorpade.

Ramtek MP Mukul Wasnik, an AICC general secretary who is making his entry into the Lok Sabha after a gap, will be a Cabinet minister. Mumbai North-West MP Gurudas Kamat will be a Minister of State. NCP’s Praful Patel, who managed to win Bhandara-Gondia by a record margin after his 2004 defeat, also figured in the list as a Minister of State with independent charge. Wasnik’s entry into the Cabinet may have resulted in Congress MP from Nagpur Vilas Muttemwar being dropped.

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