Chandrashekhar Bawankule

Chandrashekhar Krishnarao Bawankule is President of Bharatiya Janata Party, Maharashtra and Member of Maharashtra Legislative Council representing Nagpur Local Authorities on 2 January 2022. He was member of the 13th Maharashtra Legislative Assembly & Minister for Energy, New and Renewable Energy Maharashtra, Ministry of State Excise (Maharashtra), and also appointed Nagpur Guardian Minister on 26 December 2014.

A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he represented the Kamthi Assembly Constituency, being elected from there in 2004, 2009 & 2014. He was made Secretary of the Bhartiya Janata Party, Maharashtra State Unit in Devendra Fadnavis' team in 2012. In a cabinet expansion, he was given charge of the state excise department on 10 July 2016.

Background and family
Chandrashekhar Bawankule was born in Kamthi into a Marathi Teli family. He is married to Jyoti Bawankule and has two children.

Early life
Bawankule was born and raised in a farming family with no political background. Koradi, located near Nagpur, is the place where he pursued his higher education in the stream of Science & completed first year.

Political career
Bawankule's career commenced in earnest in the early nineties, he started "Chhatrapati Sena" and continued its social work till 1994. Then he joined Bhartiya Janata Party under the leadership of Gopinath Munde and Nitin Gadkari in 1995, becoming Vice President of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha a youth wing of the BJP in Maharashtra in 1995.

In 1997 & 2002, Bawankule was elected as a District Council Member. In 2004, he was elected to the Maharashtra state assembly for the first time, from Kamthi constituency. He was reelected twice, in 2009 and 2014. Due to allegations of corruption, the BJP did not give Bawankule the ticket to contest Assembly elections in 2019. It was given to his wife Jyoti instead, but later rescinded from her as well.

Within BJP

 * President, Bharatiya Janata Party, Maharashtra, Since 12 August 2022
 * Vice President, BJYM Nagpur District (1995)
 * General Secretary, BJP Nagpur District
 * President, Bhartiya Janata Party, Nagpur District
 * Secretary, Maharashtra BJP State Unit (2012-2014)

Legislative

 * Member, Zilha Parishad, Nagpur (1997 & 2002)
 * Member, Maharashtra Legislative Assembly - Since 2004-2019
 * Cabinet Minister Maharashtra, Energy, New & Renewable Energy
 * Guardian Minister of Nagpur
 * Member, Maharashtra Legislative Council - Since 2 Jan. 2022