From his days riding a humble Vijay Super scooter as an activist of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student group linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), across the colleges of Nagpur, Devendra Fadnavis has come a long way. At age 44, he will now tour Maharashtra in the chief minister’s motorcade. Fadnavis was just 17 when he lost his father, Gangadharrao, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member in the state legislative council.
Informing his mother, Saritatai, that he wants to carry forward his father’s political work, he joined the ABVP. While pursuing his law degree in 1992 at the age of 22, he contested his first election for the post of a corporator in the Nagpur Municipal Corporation and won. Hailing from Vidarbha region, he is now set to become the second youngest chief minister of Maharashtra. The four-time legislator from Nagpur on Tuesday was unanimously elected leader of the Maharashtra BJP legislative wing, paving the way for him to become the 18th chief minister of the state. Fadnavis will be the second Brahmin chief minister of Maharashtra after Manohar Joshi who headed the state’s first non-Congress government at the head of a Shiv Sena-BJP alliance between 1995 and 1999. Being a Brahmin is considered a disadvantage in Maharashtra politics. Brahmins make up just 3.5% of the state’s population and, like Tamil Nadu in the south, Maharashtra, too, has a strong anti-Brahmin movement going back many years. (Detailed story on page 25)