Ashwini Bhide, one of Maharashtra’s best-known bureaucrats, got another high on Friday, with the Devendra Fadnavis government appointing him as the new Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister.
Seen as one of the most influential in the state, with few women holding the post, chief ministers have chosen their confidantes for it. Bhide, 54, replaces IPS officer Brijesh Singh, who was appointed to the post by the Eknath Shinde-led grand coalition government last year, and became the first police officer to become principal secretary to the chief minister.
Many former principal secretaries of Maharashtra chief ministers have become chief secretaries, the highest post in the state bureaucracy.
With Bhide’s appointment, Devendra Fadnavis seems to have signaled that infrastructure, one of BJP’s key campaign planks, will be his top priority in his second term as chief minister. Bhide has spearheaded some of Maharashtra’s most ambitious and high-profile infrastructure projects — from overseeing the city’s first underground metro line to managing the expansive coastal road project along the Arabian Sea.
Further confirming this, Bhide will take over his current charge as Managing Director of Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRCL) for the time being.
A native of Sangli, Bhide is a 1995 batch IAS officer who married her batchmate and former bureaucrat Dr Satish Bhide. It was during her and her husband’s tenure in Nagpur (2000–2003) that Bhide first came into contact with Devendra Fadnavis, then the first-time MLA and Mayor of Nagpur.
She served as CEO of Nagpur Zilla Parishad between 2004 and 2008 before becoming Deputy Secretary to successive Maharashtra Governors. She joined the big league in 2008 with her appointment as Joint Metropolitan Commissioner of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).
The MMRDA oversaw some major urban infrastructure projects during this time, including the Eastern Freeway, the Milan subway flyover, Mumbai’s skywalks, and the cleaning of the Mithi River. Many of these projects required the relocation of people, and despite occasionally running into political ire, she was known for her ability to handle such sensitive matters with diplomacy.
In 2014, when Fadnavis first became chief minister, he returned Bhide to the infrastructure sector, ending his one-year stint as secretary in the school education department. She was among the group of officers he had chosen at that time.
In January 2015, Bhide was appointed to the top post at MMRCL, a joint venture between the Maharashtra government and the Center to build a fully underground 33.5 km metro corridor in one of the world’s densest cities.
It was then that Bhide ran into one of the biggest controversies of his career, with Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (then Ekta) being a part of the state government.
Uddhav’s son Aditya, who has been seeking political space for himself, opposed the plan for a Metro car shed in the Aarey Colony green belt area of Mumbai. Bhide’s frequent social media posts and television interviews endorsing the Aarey plan, as part of which 2,141 trees will be cut to build a Metro car shed, added to the army’s ire. As his celebrity grew, there was a backlash against him not only from the army ranks but also from environmentalists, with the opposition accusing him of doing Fadnavis’s bidding.
After the 2019 assembly elections, when the BJP failed to form the government and the Sena drove it out, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government that came to power scrapped the Aarey car shed scheme and kicked out Bhide.
However, in what was seen as a confirmation of his merits, he was brought back within three months by the MVA government and made the Additional Municipal Commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipality (BMC). Major projects he handled during this tenure included the ambitious Coastal Road in Mumbai.
After the MVA government fell, and was replaced by the BJP-Eknath Shinde Sena, Bhide was reappointed as the head of the Metro Corporation within 13 days, though he continued in his BMC post. He was finally transferred from the BMC before this year’s Lok Sabha elections on the request of the Election Commission.
Bhide remained at the helm of MMRCL, however. And proving the Mahayuti government’s faith in its authority, it delivered a complete section of the underground metro line – before the assembly elections.
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