Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis continues to be Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s blue-eyed boy. If that’s not enough, he also enjoys an excellent rapport with other senior BJP leaders. Despite the BJP winning 105 seats in Maharashtra in 2019, it could not retain power after the Shiv Sena defected and joined hands with the NCP-Congress combine to form the MVA.
Yet, Fadnavis tried to get his fellow birthday boy Ajit Pawar to join his alliance and nearly succeeded for four days before the junior Pawar realised that the grass was greener for him in the MVA.
Despite the loss, the BJP high-command kept faith in Fadnavis and made him Leader of Opposition in the state assembly.
However, with the recent rebellion by Sena MLAs, he turned the tables and grabbed power. He is now deputy CM in Eknath Shinde's government.
During his tenure as CM, Fadnavis not only silenced his competitors within the party but checkmated traditional political rivals Congress and NCP. Although Shiv Sena, after initial refusal, joined the government, it had no voice as Fadnavis was the boss and he had his say in government functioning.
Initially, Fadnavis was attacked by opposition for lack of administrative experience and skill to head the alliance government. However, he not only tightened his hold on the administration but made opposition do mere reaction based politics.
Further, despite being attacked for coming from the Brahmin community, Fadnavis reached out to practically every caste and community and won over their confidence. Even though his government failed to keep the poll promise of providing reservation to the Dhangar community, he gave them a slew of incentives. Similarly, he softly handled the agitation for Maratha reservation.
Fadnavis set a record of sorts of completing five year tenure as the CM after former Chief Minister Vasantrao Naik who had held the CM’s post for more than 11 years. Under his leadership, BJP won maximum seats in the civic and local body elections and thereby spread its wings across the state by capturing the bastions of Congress and NCP.
