In what came as a relief to Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil and two other members of the Devendra Fadnavis Cabinet, the Bombay High Court on Friday refused to quash their appointment as Ministers, even while disapproving the appointments on moral ground and saying that they were done “merely for political gains and convenience”.

Apart from Vikhe Patil, the two other newly-appointed Ministers who got reprieve were Shiv Sena leader Jaydutt Kshirsagar and RPI (A) leader Avinash Mahatekar.

Dismissing a petition challenging the appointment of Vikhe Patil and two other Ministers, a HC division bench of Justices SC Dharmadhikari and GS Patel observed that inspired by the electoral victory of the BJP, leaders from other political parties had joined the ruling saffron alliance.

Describing the appointments as “morally incorrect”, the HC bench noted that these appointments were done for “merely for political gains and convenience”, but IT refused to disqualify them on the ground that they had not “defected” to the ruling alliance.

"The Ministers have been inducted in the State Assembly merely for political gains and convenience. We do not endorse this. What has been done may strictly not be morally correct and may have been a political plot but we cannot hold that the Ministers defected and are disqualified," the two judges noted.

Fadnavis inducted Vikhe-Patil and two others into his Ministry when he expanded his Cabinet on June 16 this year, by bringing in 13 new Ministers — eight Cabinet ranked ones and five Ministers of State — into the State Cabinet and dropping six existing Ministers from his Cabinet.

Vikhe-Patil, whose son Sujay had quit the Congress in March this year and won the Lok Sabha polls by a margin of 2.81 lakh votes from Ahmednagar constituency on a BJP ticket, was rewarded with a ministerial berth by the ruling BJP even before he formally joined the BJP.