The rise of 54-year-old Devendra Gangadharrao Fadnavis from an obscure corporator from Nagpur to the first BJP chief minister of Maharashtra has been consistent and steady.

Affectionately addressed locally in Maharashtra as “Deva Bhau” (Brother Devendra), Fadnavis happens to be the second Brahmin after BJP’s estranged ally Shiv Sena’s Manohar Joshi, to become Maharashtra chief minister in a state whose politics is dominated by the Maratha caste, which is 28% of the state’s population.

The Facebook page of Fadnavis describes him as “Ram Sevak | Kar Sevak | Maharashtra’s Sevak”. “Politics to me is an instrument to bring socio-economic change in the lives of the people,” his Facebook page mentions.

The soft spoken and portly leader enjoys the support of the RSS as well as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, besides senior BJP leader Amit Shah.

“Devendra is Nagpur’s gift to the country,” Modi had said about him during an election rally.

Though Modi had launched an election campaign blitzkrieg for the 2014 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly polls, much of the credit also went to then Maharashtra state BJP president Fadnavis, for the party’s unprecedented electoral victory.

One of the most articulate politicians from Maharashtra, Fadnavis is also credited with pushing the previous Congress-NCP government into a corner over the alleged irrigation scam, in which his present ally Ajit Pawar was allegedly involved.

Devendra Fadnavis was born in a Maharashtrian Chitpawan Brahmin family in Nagpur on July 22, 1970. His father Gangadhar Rao was an RSS pracharak and a Member of Legislative Council (MLC) of the Jana Sangh, which was the forerunner of the BJP.

In 1987, when Fadnavis was 17 years old, his father passed away. In 1989, at the age of 19, he joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the RSS, when he was in college, after being an RSS member since a tender age. He went on to study business management after obtaining a degree in law, but ended up making a career in politics.

His political career began at a very young age, in 1992, when he became a corporator from Nagpur. Five years later, in 1997, Fadnavis became the youngest mayor of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation at 27 years and the second-youngest mayor in the history of India, by winning the municipal election from Ramnagar ward.

Two years later, he reached the Maharashtra assembly by winning an election from Nagpur West seat in 1999. He was elected as the Member of Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (MLA) for 5 consecutive terms.

At the age of 44, Fadnavis became the second youngest Chief Minister of Maharashtra on October 31, 2014. His tenure as CM was notable for various infrastructural and developmental initiatives, including the implementation of schemes aimed at improving rural Maharashtra.

Fadnavis experienced his first setback as CM in the aftermath of the 2019 assembly elections as the then undivided Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray pulled out of the pre-poll Sena-BJP alliance, refusing to share the CM’s post with Fadnavis.

On 23 November 2019, Fadnavis formed a government with the help of Ajit Pawar of NCP. Fadnavis was sworn in as Maharashtra chief minister for the second time on November 23, 2019 in a midnight ceremony with Ajit Pawar as deputy chief minister. However, before a Supreme Court-ordered no-confidence motion could take place, Fadnavis quit on November 26, only three days after taking oath as Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

In 2022, Fadnavis was expected to become the Chief Minister of Maharashtra once again, but he put forward the name of Eknath Shinde for the post of Maharashtra Chief Minister and ended up taking oath as Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra instead.

Besides politics, Fadnavis has been a model for a Nagpur-based clothing brand. The late BJP leader and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was known to take delight in embarrassing Fadnavis by often addressing him in public as “Aayiye aayiye modelji, kaise ho aap…”

Informed circles within the BJP say that Fadnavis is destined to play a role in national politics in the not very distant future.