Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Chhagan Bhujbal, 77, who had threatened to leave the party over the exclusion from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in Maharashtra, was sworn in as a minister on Tuesday.
Bhujbal, a prominent Other Backward Class (OBC) leader, was considered a key aide to Ajit Pawar, who split the NCP in June 2023. He targeted Pawar over his exclusion from the government while threatening to leave the party. “I would not stay where I am not needed,” he had said.
Governor CP Radhakrishnan administered the oath of office to Bhujbal as chief minister Devendra Fadnavis expanded his ministry for the second time since the BJP-led coalition returned to power late last year. Fadnavis and his deputies, Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, were present at the swearing-in ceremony.
“All is well that ends well,” said Bhujbal, who was likely to get the food and civil supplies portfolio that he held in the previous government as well.
State NCP chief Sunil Tatkare maintained Bhujbal was not unhappy. “Initially, he did express his feelings…then the core group of the NCP decided to bring him back in the Cabinet…,” Tatkare said.
Bhujbal was inducted into the Cabinet weeks after the BJP-led Union government announced that a caste-based enumeration would be part of the decadal census, which is expected to give the OBC community a significant advantage. His inclusion also comes ahead of elections to 687 municipal bodies and district councils after the monsoon. OBCs are the single largest voting bloc in states such as Maharashtra.
Son of a vegetable vendor, Bhujbal is an alumnus of Mumbai’s Veermata Jijabai Technical Institute. Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray inspired him to join politics. He served as the Mumbai mayor twice and as a lawmaker from the city’s Mazgaon. Bhujbal rebelled in 1991 when Thackeray picked Manohar Joshi as the opposition leader in the assembly. In the 1995 assembly elections, Bhujbal lost to then little-known Shiv Sena leader Bala Nandgaonkar.
Bhujbal was elected to the legislative council and became the opposition leader before Sharad Pawar picked him to be the state president when he floated the NCP. Bhujbal became the deputy chief minister when the NCP formed the government with Congress in 1999. He was forced to quit in 2003 after he was linked to a fake stamp paper racket.
Bhugbal managed a comeback when the Congress-NCP combine returned to power in 2004. He retained the deputy chief minister post in the next Congress-NCP government in 2009. Within a year, he lost the post to Ajit Pawar but remained a minister between 2010 and 2014 and faced allegations of money laundering.