Devendra Fadnavis, the face of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) in Maharashtra, is set to be sworn in as the Chief Minister of the state for the second time tomorrow, December 5.

This has been confirmed as the Governor of Maharashtra CP Radhakrishnan invited leaders of the Mahayuti Alliance, i.e. Fadnavis, Eknath Shinde of the Shiv Sena, and Ajit Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to form the government, after their landslide victory in the recent Maharashtra State Assembly Elections.

Who is Devendra Fadnavis?

Born in Nagpur on July 22, 1970, Devendra Fadnavis has previously served as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra from 2014 to 2019.

Fadnavis received his early education at Indira Convent, named after then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

During the Emergency, Fadnavis' father, a Jan Sangh member, was imprisoned for taking part in anti-government protests. Fadnavis later declined to continue his education at Indira Convent because he did not want to attend a school named after the Prime Minister, whom he blamed for imprisoning his father.

He was then sent to the Saraswati Vidyalaya School in Nagpur, where he completed the majority of his education. Fadnavis completed his higher secondary education at Dharampeth Junior College.

He is a graduate of law from the Government Law College, Nagpur University. He also holds a postgraduate degree in business management, and a diploma in project management methods and techniques from the DSE-German Foundation for International Development in Berlin, Germany.

Fadnavis forayed into politics as a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student group affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). At the age of 22, he became a corporator at the Nagpur Municipal Corporation and eventually became Mayor at the age of 27 — the youngest person to hold the post.

While the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance was also able to gain the majority in the 2019 Assembly Elections, Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackrey pulled out of the alliance due to differences over the CM’s post and joined the Congress-NCP alliance to become the State’s CM.

Fadnavis served as the leader of the opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly until Ajit Pawar and Eknath Shinde split away from the NCP and Shiv Sena respectively in 2022 — a split whose architect is claimed to be Fadnavis.

During this period, he served as the state’s Deputy Chief Minister along with Ajit Pawar, with Eknath Shinde as the Chief Minister.

While Ajit Pawar is expected to retain his post in the new cabinet, Eknath Shinde’s role in the cabinet is still unconfirmed.