On Saturday, an old tweet of Devendra Fadnavis promising never to ally with NCP went viral. In 2014, he had written: “BJP will never, never, never have any alliance with NCP. Rumours are motivated. We exposed their corruption in assembly. Others were silent.”
In a major development, Fadnavis earlier this morning took oath as the Chief Minister for the second consecutive term while Pawar took oath as Deputy Chief Minister of the state.
The move came at a time when deliberations between Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena on government formation seemingly reached the final stage on Friday.
Earlier, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar had claimed that there was a consensus on Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray as chief minister of the alliance government.
The BJP, which emerged as the single largest party in last month's assembly elections, could not stake claim to form a government as its ally Shiv Sena remained firm on rotating the Chief Minister's post and equal sharing of Cabinet berths.
Shiv Sena parted its ways with BJP to explore ways to form a government. It, however, failed to prove the support of the required number of MLAs in the time given by state Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari.
The Governor had then invited NCP, the third-largest party, to prove its ability to form the government failing which President's Rule was imposed in the state With inputs from ANI
