Mumbai: Former BMC chief Praveen Pardeshi is being appointed as chief economic advisor to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. He will also continue as CEO of Maharashtra Institution for Transformation (Mitra). He will be expected to lead data-collecting institutions such as Directorate of Economics & Statistics and Maharashtra Remote Sensing Applications Centre and create a data-driven administrative structure.
An IAS officer of the 1985 batch, Pardeshi was BMC commissioner from May 2019 to May 2020. In the past, retired chief secretaries were appointed as advisors to the CM, but it was the first time that Fadnavis created the post of chief economic advisor in the chief minister’s office.
A trusted bureaucrat of Fadnavis, Pardeshi was additional chief secretary to the CM during his first stint in 2014. He was then shifted to BMC, however, the then CM, Uddhav Thackeray, shunted him out and posted him at Mantralaya. Then he did not take up his assignment, instead, he chose to take up an assignment with United Nations. When he missed the bus for the chief secretary’s post, he took voluntary retirement. Briefly, he worked in the Prime Minister’s office. —Prafulla Marpakwar