Do we like Devendra Fadnavis?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Some harsh communal rhetoric and a development-first record on the environment, set against a clean court outcome and welfare schemes, leaves him in the middle.
Fadnavis is a Nagpur man through and through. Born in 1970, he became a corporator at 22 and Nagpur's youngest mayor at 27, then won the Nagpur South West seat in 1999. He ran the state BJP from 2013, became Chief Minister in 2014 and finished a full term, then had a three-day stint in 2019. After a stretch as deputy to Eknath Shinde he was sworn in for a third time in December 2024.
His one big legal drama was over his 2014 election affidavit. A Nagpur lawyer alleged he failed to disclose pending criminal cases, and in September 2023 a Nagpur court acquitted him. The judge found no criminal intent, and Fadnavis had called the omission an 'inadvertent mistake' by his former lawyer. That's a clean outcome, though it was a long road to get there.
On the harm test, the 2023 'love jihad' episode is the big one. As deputy CM he told the state's legislative council the government might bring in a law, citing rallies, while saying he didn't think there should be no interfaith marriages. Critics, including SabrangIndia, called his claims unsubstantiated. It's a campaign aimed at Muslim men and interfaith couples, and that's where he loses points.
The rhetoric carried on into the 2024 campaign. At a rally he answered a 'vote jihad' appeal with a call for a 'dharma-yudh of votes', and called a Muslim council's demands dangerous and divisive. He also said the BJP is not opposed to any religion and that the Ladki Bahin scheme covers Muslim women too. In November 2025 he held up A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as 'the real icon of the Muslims'. Where you land depends on whether you read that as inclusive or as telling Muslims whom they're allowed to admire. We found nothing from him on LGBTQ+ people in what we read, so that part is a gap, not a pass.
On the planet he's a build-first bloke. In 2022 he called the Aarey forest protests 'half genuine & half sponsored' and argued the metro car shed would ease Mumbai's traffic. Environmentalists say that's development at the forest's expense; he says the project is the answer to congestion. It's a contested call, not climate denial.
The latest stoush is classic Maharashtra politics. In August 2026 he said a ruckus at a Congress programme in Pune was pre-planned and that students and influencers were used for publicity. He said the allegations were backed by evidence and would be investigated. That's his claim, and the report we read carried no Congress reply.