Chandrakant Patil appointed as new BJP Maharashtra chief after Raosaheb Danve's resignation in lead-up to assembly elections

In a big development ahead of Maharashtra assembly polls, Chandrakant Patil has been appointed as new BJP Maharashtra President, moments after former state party chief Raosaheb Danve officially resigned from his post on Tuesday. Chandrakant Patil serves as the Cabinet Minister for Revenue and Public Works in Devendra Fadnavis cabinet since July 2016.

Along with Patil, Mangal Prabhat Lodha has been appointed as Mumbai BJP chief, by party's National President Amit Shah on Tuesday.

Patil also serves as the Guardian Minister of Kolhapur and Pune District. After joining BJP in 2004, Chandrakant Patil was elected as its Vice President in 2013. Later in June 2014, he was appointed as a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Council after which h nominated as a Cabinet Minister of Maharashtra in October 2014. Handling the revenue, relief & rehabilitation and Public Works department, Patil has been holding the Cabinet Minister office since July 2016.

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This development has come weeks after Raosaheb Danve was inducted into the Modi Cabinet 2.0 as Minister of State. He was given the Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution portfolio, which he handled earlier also as part of the first Modi government. In the 2019 General Elections, Raosaheb Danve was re-elected from Jalna in North Maharashtra for a fifth term. 

64-year-old Danve replaced Devendra Fadnavis as Maharashtra BJP president after Fadnavis took over the charge as Chief Minister following the saffron party's victory in the October 2014 assembly polls. BJP MP Raosaheb Danve served as Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution from May 27, 2014, to March 5, 2015, after which he quit the post to take charge of BJP Maharashtra.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won 41 of the 48 Parliamentary seats in the state of Maharashtra, with BJP solely winning 23 of the 25 seats it contested. Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena won 18 of the 23 constituencies where it had fielded candidates. Meanwhile, the 2019 Maharashtra assembly elections are scheduled to take place later this year, with Shiv Sena pitching its youth leader Aaditya Thackeray as a promising candidate for Chief Minister's post. 

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