BJP Minister Chandrakant Patil says planning for regaining power in Maharashtra was afoot for two years

The Maharashtra minister and BJP leader  Chandrakant Patil said that the party's planning for regaining power in the state was underway for the last two years.

The wait was longer than in Madhya Pradesh or Karnataka because the BJP needed 40 more MLAs to reach the majority figure in the Assembly, he told reporters here.

“I was not stupid to keep saying in the last two years that we were soon coming to power as there was planning, there were some developments, incidents in my head. I wanted to give confidence to party workers that they should not be worried,” said the former state BJP chief.

According to the report of PTI, the BJP, which emerged as the largest single party after the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections, could not form government as its then ally Shiv Sena joined hands with the Congress and NCP. The saffron party retuned to power in June 2022 by supporting rebel Sena leader Eknath Shinde as chief minister.

Patil, meanwhile, also said that barring a leader from Shirala who was forced to leave, not a single BJP leader or worker left the party in the last two and a half years despite facing hardship and harassment.

“To keep their morale high, they were always told that we are coming back to power, planning is going on. But planning was really afoot,” he said.