IANS

Jalgaon (Maharashtra), Apr 2: Senior Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sudhir Mungantivar was elected state party chief here Friday, a party official said.

The 48-year old Mungantivar, a four-time legislator, will replace Nitin Gadkari, who was elected national BJP president last December.

Holding a post-graduate degree in commerce, a degree in law, and diplomas in business management and journalism, Mungantivar plunged into politics during his college days when he became Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the BJP's youth wing, Chandrapur town secretary.

In 1987, he was appointed Chandrapur district chief of BJYM and contested the Lok Sabha elections - in 1989 and 1991 - but was unsuccessful both times.

Mungantivar, who belongs to eastern Maharashtra, was elected vice-president of state BJYM in 1993. Two years later, he was elected to the Maharashtra legislative assembly from Chandrapur - with the highest victory margin in entire Vidarbha (eastern Maharashtra) region.

Four years later, in 1999, Mungantivar was appointed a minister for tourism in the erstwhile Shiv Sena-BJP alliance government, then headed by Narayan Rane, and in which he was a colleague of Gadkari.

Meanwhile, in 2001, he was elected national vice-president of BJYM and managed to repeat his electoral victories to the state assembly in 1999, 2004 and again in 2009 from Ballarpur.