Maharashtra minister and NCP MLA Manikrao Kokate was reportedly divested of the agriculture ministry and alloted new portfolios in a late-night cabinet reshuffle on Thursday.
Kokate has been shifted from the agriculture ministry to the sports and youth welfare department. He will also be in charge of the minority development and Auqaf departments, accordign to a notification issued by the General Administration Department (GAD) on Thursday night.
Dattatrey Bharne, the current sports minister, will be the new agriculture minister, as per the notification cited by new agency PTI.
Both Kokate and Bharne are MLAs of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP. Bharne is MLA from Indapur in Pune district.
Kokate, a legislator from Sinnar in Nashik district, found himself in hot water after a video of him playing an online rummy game on his mobile phone while sitting in the legislative council during the monsoon session was shared on social media by NCP (SP) leaders Rohit Pawar and Jitendra Awhad.
Manikrao Kokate later claimed that it was a “solitaire game” and that he was only trying to skip a downloaded game on his mobile phone.
“It is a solitaire game, not Rummy. Any of my colleagues must have downloaded it. I was trying to see what was happening in the lower house. I was not playing Rummy. The Opposition is trying to demean the government,” Kokate said.
“I don’t even know what rummy is,” he said. “Ten different types of ads come up on YouTube… You have to watch it for 30 seconds and you can’t even skip it…,” he said.
Maharashtra minister Manikrao Kokate also claimed that selective footage had been shared on social media to defame him.
“When the upper house of the state legislature was adjourned, I took out my mobile phone to check the business transacted in the lower house and was trying to open YouTube,” he was quoted by news agency PTI as saying.
“The downloaded game suddenly opened, and I was skipping it. It was a matter of just 5 to 10 seconds; why that part was not shown?” he said while responding to the criticism he was facing over the video.
“The full video should come out. Only a short clip has been made viral. This is a ploy by the opposition, but their tactics will never succeed,” Kokate was quoted by India Today as saying.
He also courted controversy for allegedly equating farmers with beggars a few months ago.
Earlier this year, Dhananjay Munde, another NCP leader, had to resign from the Devendra Fadnavis-led ministry after his close aide Walmik Karad was named as the prime accused in the Santosh Deshmukh murder case.
