Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis expanded his cabinet on Sunday, inducting 33 cabinet ministers and 6 ministers of state, the 10-day gap since the Mahayuti government’s swearing-in underscoring the tussle among the allies for key portfolios.

The BJP grabbed the lion’s share of berths with 16 cabinet ministers and 3 ministers of state, while Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena secured 9 cabinet ministers and 2 ministers of state. Ajit Pawar’s NCP will have 8 cabinet ministers and a single minister of state.

“In two days, it will be clear who will be given which portfolio,” Fadnavis told news agency ANI.

That announcement will clear the air over the high-profile home portfolio, which has been the object of a tug-of-war between the BJP and Shinde.

The Sena boss was chief minister in the previous Mahayuti government but has been compelled to accept the post of deputy chief minister in the new dispensation.

Sources in the BJP said the home portfolio would remain with Fadnavis, with Shinde getting urban development.

“After days of hard bargaining, Shinde has finally agreed to give up his claim on the home portfolio,” a BJP leader said.

He added that the allies had agreed to broadly follow the previous arrangement. In the last Mahayuti government, then deputy chief minister Fadnavis held the home portfolio while the other deputy chief minister, Ajit, held finance. Shinde had kept urban development for himself.

Hours before the expansion, Ajit said some of the inductees would have a tenure of two-and-a-half years, underlining the constraints of accommodating all the hopefuls.

Ajit said: “We have decided to give responsibility for two-and-a-half years to some ministers and ministers of state. This will ensure that more leaders are given the opportunity (to become ministers for the remaining two-and-a-half years).”

Fadnavis too told reporters: “We will do a performance audit of every minister. If we find that a minister’s performance is not up to the mark, we will rethink about that particular minister.”

Fadnavis and his deputies Shinde and Ajit had been sworn in on December 5. Shinde had initially indicated he would not join the government if denied the home portfolio.

He, however, appears to have climbed down under pressure from the central BJP leadership as well as his party colleagues, who argued that power was essential to sustaining the party.

The ministry expansion comes ahead of the weeklong winter session of the Assembly, beginning on Monday in Nagpur, the second capital of Maharashtra.

The Mahayuti has swept back to power, winning 235 of the 288 seats in last month’s Maharashtra elections. The BJP’s tally of 132 enabled it to claim the chief minister’s post and regain its political dominance in the state following the reverses in the summer general election. Shinde’s Sena won 57 seats and Ajit’s NCP, 41.

The ministers sworn in on Sunday include 16 new faces while 10 former ministers have been dropped, PTI reported.

The new council of ministers reflects Fadnavis’s efforts to balance the caste equations among the Marathas, OBCs, Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, as well as the aspirations of the state’s different regions.

With the new inductees, the strength of the ministry has risen to 42. The council of ministers in Maharashtra can have a maximum strength of 43.

Among the new ministers, four are women: Pankaja Munde, Madhuri Misal, and Meghna Bordikar of the BJP and Aditi Tatkare of the NCP. Munde and Tatkare are cabinet ministers while Bordikar and Misal are ministers of state.

Sunday’s expansion witnessed the re-entry of state BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Jaykumar Raval, Pankaja Munde and Ashok Uike, who had served as ministers during Fadnavis’s first term between 2014 and 2019.

Additional reporting by PTI