Prithviraj Chavan took over the Chief Minister’s post on November 10, 2010, to replace ex-CM Ashok Chavan, who resigned following the Adarsh housing society controversy. As scams and corrupt deals in government projects pushed the United Progressive Alliance government, as well as the Maharashtra government, into a corner, the Congress loyalist and former union minister of state for Science was sent to Maharashtra to clean up the mess.
In the process, he came to be known as “Mr-Clean-But-Slow” and was widely criticised for dithering on decisions relating to multiple issues related to infrastructure, housing, tolls and so on. The stickler for rules annoyed fellow ministers and bureaucrats as it took days to clear files.
Nevertheless, Chavan got into the act barely two months ahead of the polls and cleared a record number of proposals, including regularisation of pre-2000 slums, power subsidy, Metro projects for Pune and Nagpur, cluster development and emergency medical services. He is now known as “Mr Superfast”.
