Deshmukh had dropped Satish Chaturvedi, Bandubhau Savarbandhe, Madhu Chavan (all Congress), Harshvardhan Patil (independent and a Pawar-baiter), Rajendra Shingne, and Rajesh Tope (Nationalist Congress Party) on Sunday as per an agreement between the Congress and the NCP on pruning the 61-member jumbo ministry to 55.

Chaturvedi on Monday fired a salvo against NCP president Sharad Pawar and a coterie of the state Congress party, holding them responsible for his exclusion from the council of ministers.

When Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's attention was drawn to the displeasure expressed by the axed ministers, he said he could understand their feelings. "It was a painful excercise for me also to drop my colleagues," he said, adding, the "dropped ministers will be accommodated in some other manner."

A visibly furious Chaturvedi, who is an Uttar Pradesh brahmin, termed the Chief Minister's decision unfortunate, as well as "inhuman, cruel and indecent." "This is an insult of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who had appointed me as the cabinet minister. This is a handiwork of Pawar, PA Sangma, Tariq Anwar, Congress MP Vilas Muttemwar, veteran leader NKP Salve, and NCP spokesperson Praful Patel," he alleged.

Chaturvedi also put the onus on certain state Congress leaders for their insistence on his exclusion from the ministry, and said he would settle the score politically. "We are loyal Congressmen with self-respect and not paid employees of any organisation. We cannot tolerate such humiliations," he claimed.

Chaturvedi hit out at Pawar, and alleged the NCP president wanted to destabilise the government. He said that ultimately Pawar would join hands with the BJP, both in Maharashtra and at the Centre.

Chaturvedi also said that the Shiv Sena was a known political opponent of the Congress-I, but the party could not afford to have any relations with an "hidden" enemy like Pawar.

Chaturvedi, who was involved in the famous coup against Pawar in 1991 by the anti-Pawar camp.