Subhash Desai was appointed as leader of the Shiv Sena in 2005.
Shiv Sena's Subhash Desai was among the six ministers who took oath took as a minister in the Maharashtra cabinet yesterday along with Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who was sworn-in as the state's Chief Minister. The six leaders - two each from Congress, Shiv Sena, and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) - took oath as ministers in Maharashtra's alliance government under the "Maha Vikas Aghadi" front. The leaders who took oath include National Congress Party's Jayant Patil, Chhagan Bhujbal, Shiv Sena's Eknath Shinde and Congress' Balasaheb Thorat and Nitin Raut. They were administered the oath of office and secrecy by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari at Shivaji Park in Mumbai.
Subhash Desai, who was appointed as leader of the Shiv Sena in 2005, represented Goregaon in 1990, 2004 and 2009.
He was the guardian minister of Mumbai in 2014 and was elected to Maharashtra Legislative Council for the second time in 2016.
One of the confidants of Uddhav Thackeray, the 77-year-old is the senior-most member of the cabinet and had been a member of the assembly three times.
Now serving his third term in the upper house of the legislature, Mr Desai was the industries minister in the previous BJP-Sena government.
The BJP and the Sena, which fought the last month's Assembly polls in an alliance, secured a comfortable majority by winning 105 and 56 seats, but the alliance broke after the BJP declined to share the chief minister's post.
Uddhav Thackeray is the first member of the Thackeray family to become the Chief Minister of Maharashtra and the third Shiv Sena leader to hold the top post after Manohar Joshi and Narayan Rane. Uddhav Thackeray took oath as the 18th Maharashtra chief minister, more than a month after the results were declared in the state.