Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) state unit has started a search for a new face as its Maharashtra unit president Raosaheb Danve has been inducted into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet.

A senior BJP leader and Cabinet minister said that the new BJP state chief would be picked before the Assembly election, which is to be held in three months. Sources in the BJP said that chief minister Devendra Fadnavis would not allow any BJP leader to challenge him and stake a claim on the post of chief minister.

Chandrakant Patil, Girish Mahajan, Subhash Deshmukh and Dr Ranjit Patil’s names are doing rounds for the state BJP chief’s post.

Mr Danve, re-elected from Jalna in North Maharashtra for a fifth term, was on Thursday inducted as a minister of consumer affairs, food and public distribution in the Modi 2.0 Cabinet.

According to the BJP’s ‘one-man-one-post’ policy, a leader can be vested with only one responsibility. Therefore, Mr Danve had to step down as the BJP’s state unit president. Sources said that the BJP state president will be appointed after the national president is appointed.

A senior BJP leader said that a new BJP state president would be selected in consultation with the saffron party’s central leadership and the state core committee.

A BJP insider claimed that minister of the state for home Dr Ranjit Patil, who is considered close to Mr Fadnavis, is said to be preferred among the four aforementioned candidates.  

In the recently concluded Lok Sabha election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 23 out of 48 constituencies in the state while its ally Shiv Sena won 18.