Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday asked BJP president Amit Shah in New Delhi to approve a month-long ‘Vikas Rath Yatra’ across the state in August, as the party prepares to defend its government in the coming assembly election.

The yatra plan

Fadnavis intends to begin the tour on August 1, using it to showcase his government’s record and to meet voters directly. The newly appointed state BJP president, Chandrakant Dada Patil, has set the party a goal of 220 seats, and the plan is to concentrate on assembly constituencies the BJP has never won.

Meanwhile, the BJP and its ally the Shiv Sena are at odds over which of them would name the next chief minister if the alliance wins. Aditya Thackeray, son of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, started his own mass contact campaign, the ‘Jan Ashirvad Yatra’, on Friday.

Delhi visit

Fadnavis was in the capital for the opening meeting of a high-powered panel of chief ministers that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had formed, where he put forward his plan to tackle severe farm distress in Maharashtra. On Thursday he also met Shah, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan at Parliament House.

What happened next

In the 2019 Maharashtra assembly election the BJP won 105 of the 288 seats, the Shiv Sena 56, the NCP 54 and the Congress 44. After the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance broke down, Uddhav Thackeray became Chief Minister in November 2019 with the backing of the NCP and the Congress.

See also: BJP | Elections

Originally published on 19 July 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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