A day after quitting the Congress party, the former chief minister of Maharashtra Ashok Chavan joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday. The haste shown in admitting the leader indicated that he would most likely be one of the BJP’s candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls in which the state has six vacancies to fill.

Amid chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’, the state BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule inducted Chavan and his supporter, ex-MLC Amar Rajurkar at party headquarters in Mumbai. Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis and a host of BJP leaders welcomed the two-time CM, who left the Congress after 38 years on Monday.