Mumbai, Dec 13 (IANS): Ashwini Bhide, an IAS of 1995 has been appointed as the Principal Secretary to the Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Bhide is currently the managing director of the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation.

As per the orders issued by the general administration department, Bhide will continue to hold this additional charge till further orders.

Her appointment is crucial when Fadnavis has asked the state administration to focus on making the government functioning more transparent while putting the implementation of various decisions on fast track.

The state government last week appointed Shrikar Pardeshi, an IAS of 2001 batch as the Secretary to the Chief Minister.

Bhide is popularly known in the bureaucratic and corporate circles as the Metro Woman for her role in the implementation of the Mumbai Metro 3 project Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ. The Metro 3 between Aarey Colony and BKC has been opened for traffic ahead of the state assembly election while the remaining phase will be operational in the coming months.

Bhide was removed from the post of managing director of the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation and transferred as the additional municipal commissioner in the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation after Uddhav Thackeray led Maha Vikas Aghadi government took over in November 2019.

The MVA government had stayed the construction of the Metro3 crashed project being developed in the Aarey Colony citing protection of forest cover there.

Bhide as the BMC additional commissioner played a major role in the handling of the coronavirus pandemic by implementing a slew of measures. She along with the BMC staff supervised the slew of decisions taken by the state government under the Disaster Management Act to tackle the situation.

After the Eknath Shinde-led MahaYuti was formed in June 2022, Bhide was transferred again as the MD of Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation assigned the job of completion of Metro 3 project.