Minister was disappointed after losing shot at being CM

If political sources are to be believed, outgoing revenue minister Eknath Khadse has paid the price for his ‘defiant nature’ in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which prides itself on its strict discipline. The allegations of corruption proved to be the last straw on the camel’s back.

When the BJP came to power one and half years ago, it was Devendra Fadnavis who was the surprise choice of party high command for the post of chief minister while Mr Khadse was the main claimant for the post, being the party’s senior-most leader.

Though he was mollified by being offered nearly a dozen portfolios in the state Cabinet, including important ones like revenue, state excise, minorities development and Wakf, the 64-year-old Other Backward Class (OBC) leader never quite hid the disappointment of losing the top post to a relatively junior leader like Mr Fadnavis.

His discontent at times proved to be an embarrassment for the party and a cold war between the two had started from the oath-taking ceremony.

However, despite enjoying number two position in the Cabinet, Mr Khadse's fortunes started changing dramatically as corruption charges started surfacing thick and fast from all quarters.

To add salt to his woes, no top leader in the party stood by him in his time of crisis. He was pushed to the corner to such an extent that there was finally no coming back.

At the same time, Mr Khadse held on gamely due to his enormous clout in North Maharashtra, from where he started his political career as a sarpanch of his village Kothali in Jalgaon district. In Mr Khadse’s four-decade-long political career, he went on to become de facto number 2 in the first BJP-led government in the state.

It was Mr Khadse who took the lead in breaking off the 25-year-old BJP-Sena alliance ahead of the October-2014 state Assembly polls.

A member of the Leva Patil community, Mr Khadse had positioned himself as an OBC leader, especially after Gopinath Munde’s demise.

Mr Khadse was the Leader of Opposition during the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party regime. He served as a Cabinet minister in the first Shiv Sena-BJP government during 1995-99. He is known as an aggressive leader in BJP and is the only current minister that served during the Shiv Sena-BJP rule in 1995.