Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis will go for a ministry reshuffle before the winter session of the state legislature and it will see the induction of former Shiv Sena leader Narayan Rane.
"Rane has joined the NDA. He will be inducted into the state ministry. He will be a minister from our (BJP) quota," Fadnavis said at his official residence in south Mumbai.
The BJP-led Maharashtra government completes three years in office tomorrow.
The reshuffle will take place before the winter session of the state legislature, scheduled to begin in Nagpur on December 11, Fadnavis said.
He said the Shiv Sena could have objected to Rane's induction had he "come to us from the Sena. He was in the Congress for a decade after leaving the Sena".
Rane had set up his own party, the Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha, after resigning from the Congress last month. He was Maharashtra chief minister in 1999 when he was in the Shiv Sena. He had quit the Sena in 2005 and joined the Congress.
Asked if he had conveyed to the Sena that it should learn to accept the BJP as 'Big Brother' due to its good numbers in the Assembly, Fadnavis said "I do not believe (in the concept of) 'Big Brother'."
"We have always respected (Sena founder) Balasaheb Thackeray. (Sena chief) Uddhav Thackeray is senior to me in age and position. But the public decided (in the 2014 assembly polls) as to which party is senior," he said.
Fadnavis said any alliance between the BJP and the Sena (after the next assembly polls) can happen "only on the basis of this position".
Asked about a news report of NCP chief Sharad Pawar saying he had "never seen such a childish Maharashtra chief minister in the past", Fadnavis said: "He (Pawar) has clarified to me that he never said such a thing.
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