PUNE: Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP will take oath as the 31st Chief Minister of Maharashtra on Thursday after National Democratic Alliance partners backed him for the top post and staked claim for the government formation today.
Hours after Fadnavis was elected leader of the BJP Legislature Party in Mumbai, Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde and Nationalist Congress Party’s Ajit Pawar accompanied him to Maharashtra Governor CP Radhakrishnan to hand over letters of support and stake claim to form the next government.
The Governor invited Fadnavis to take oath at 5.30 pm on Thursday. The swearing-in ceremony will take place in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, top BJP leaders, NDA CMs and Deputy CMs at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan tomorrow. After the meeting, Fadnavis, flanked by Shinde and Pawar, thanked the Mahayuti partners for supporting him for the CM’s post. He added that the chief ministership was a technical arrangement and all three leaders would work collectively.
Importantly, Fadnavis extended a special thanks to Shinde, who is yet to formally announce if he will join the Mahayuti government.
“A special thanks to the Shiv Sena chief and current Chief Minister Eknath Shinde for supporting me and requesting me to take oath. The NCP’s Ajit Pawar also formally requested me to take oath. The Governor has invited me to form the government. I have requested Eknath Shinde to be part of the new government and I believe he will agree,” Fadnavis said, adding that two Deputy CMs (Shinde and Pawar) will take oath along with him tomorrow. Fadnavis said it was yet to be decided how many ministers would take oath.
Meanwhile, Shinde skipped a query on whether he would join the Fadnavis government. “Wait till the evening,” he said. Earlier, Shinde recalled that Fadnavis had proposed his name as Maharashtra CM in 2022. “I am returning the favour today,” said the caretaker CM.
With the nuances of the Maharashtra Cabinet unclear, today belonged to Fadnavis, who was rewarded for his loyalty to the BJP, which bagged the most seats in state polls.
BJP leaders spoke of how in 2022 when Shinde split the ruling Shiv Sena to join the BJP and was named CM, Fadnavis reluctantly agreed to serve as his deputy because the party wanted him to.
He earned PM Narendra Modi’s trust with the gesture. In his victory speech in Delhi after the party’s landslide win in Maharashtra on November 23, Modi had described Fadnavis as “mere param mitra (my best friend)”.
A former two-term CM (2014 to 2019 and for 72 hours in 2019), Fadnavis rose through the BJP ranks in Nagpur, the bastion of party’s ideological mentor RSS.
He became a corporator in Nagpur civic body at 22 years and later Nagpur’s youngest mayor. Fadnavis contested his first Assembly election in 1999 and won his sixth consecutive poll this year.
The 54-year-old rose in PM’s esteem as Maharashtra BJP chief in 2014 when the party stormed to victory in India’s richest state. Modi made Fadnavis the Chief Minister. In 2019 again, the BJP and undivided Shiv Sena alliance returned to power but Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray left to become CM with the support of undivided NCP chief Sharad Pawar and the Congress.
Before that Fadnavis, in a dramatic early morning swearing-in in 2019, became CM for 72 hours with the backing of NCP leader Ajit Pawar. That arrangement did not last. As Fadnavis had prophesied earlier, he will return as CM tomorrow, only the second Brahmin CM of Maharashtra after Manohar Joshi.