New Delhi (PTI): AAP MLA Mukesh Ahlawat will be the new face in the Delhi Cabinet headed by Atishi, who will be sworn in as chief minister on September 21, and four ministers will be retained, the party said on Thursday.

Chief Minister-designate Atishi and her new Cabinet will take the oath of office on the same day.

AAP said ministers Gopal Rai, Saurabh Bharadwaj, Kailash Gahlot and Imran Hussain will continue to be part of the Cabinet.

Ahlawat, MLA from Delhi's Sultanpur Majra, has been inducted to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of social welfare minister Raaj Kumar Anand.

Anand resigned from the Kejriwal government and quit the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in April.

The Council of Ministers of the Delhi government has seven members, including the chief minister. The tenure of the new chief minister and the new entrant will be brief as Delhi assembly polls are due in February next year.

The name of the seventh member is yet to be announced.

 

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Mumbai (PTI): The Bombay High Court on Thursday granted bail to consultant Chetan Patil arrested in connection with the collapse of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj''s statue at Rajkot fort in Malvan in August.

A 35-foot statue of the iconic Maratha warrior king collapsed in Sindhudurg district on August 26, nearly nine months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled it on Navy Day.

Patil was arrested on August 30 from Kolhapur.

A single bench of Justice A S Kilor on Thursday held that no case was made out to implicate Patil in the case as he had not been appointed as the structural designer of the statue.

The bench further said Patil had only submitted a structural stability report of the pedestal of the statue and the pedestal was intact even after the collapse.

Another accused, Jaydeep Apte, who was the sculptor and contractor, was also arrested in the case. The HC said it would hear his bail plea on November 25.

The Sindhudurg police had registered an FIR under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for negligence and other offences last month against Apte and Patil for the statue's collapse.

Patil and Apte moved HC seeking bail after a sessions court rejected their pleas.