North News
Mumbai, December 4
Devendra Fadnavis has been elected as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Legislative Party leader and will take oath as Maharashtra’s Chief Minister tomorrow. Fadnavis’s selection was finalised during the BJP core committee meeting on Wednesday, attended by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, and Fadnavis himself. The decision was endorsed by BJP’s top leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.
The Mahayuti coalition, comprising the BJP, the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction), and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Ajit Pawar, secured a landslide win, with the BJP claiming 132 of the 148 seats it contested. The Shiv Sena bagged 57 seats, while the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) faced a heavy defeat. Maharashtra BJP leader Sudhir Mungantiwar announced that Mahayuti leaders would meet Governor C P Radhakrishnan at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday to formally stake a claim to form the government. “After the meeting at Vidhan Bhavan, all Mahayuti leaders will proceed to Raj Bhavan to submit our claim,” Mungantiwar said.
Outgoing Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who resigned last week, expressed his full support for Fadnavis and the BJP’s decisions. Shinde, along with Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, recently met Amit Shah in New Delhi to finalize a power-sharing arrangement within the alliance.
