Ashish Shelar, under whose leadership the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the highest ever number in the city civic polls five years ago, has been appointed president of its Mumbai unit yet again. In the reorganising, Chandrashekhar Bawankule has replaced cabinet minister Chandrakant Patil in the state unit. Mangal Prabhat Lodha, who was made a minister recently, made way for Shelar.

Shelar, a Bandra West MLA, was minister of school education in the Devendra Fadnavis government only for a couple of months, before he led the BJP to grand success in Mumbai in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 2014 Assembly polls. In between came the 2017 BMC elections in which the BJP almost outnumbered the Shiv Sena, falling two seats short of the latter’s gain.