The BJP on Saturday appeared to be defeated in its game of engineering a split in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Ajit Pawar in order to muster the numbers in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly as almost all the ‘rebel’ NCP MLAs barring four or five returned to party president Sharad Pawar’s fold by the evening.

The BJP’s “midnight coup” in which it lifted the President’s Rule through special executive powers of the Prime Minister (thereby circumventing the Union Cabinet’s approval) and the state Governor administered oath of office of chief minister to Devendra Fandnavis and that of deputy chief minister to Ajit Pawar in a hush hush early morning ceremony, was virtually turned on its head by the evening.

The swearing in ceremony came hours after Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray emerged as the Sena-NCP-Congress' consensus candidate for the top post.

President Ram Nath Kovind signed the proclamation for revocation of the central rule and a gazette notification to this effect was issued at 5.47 am.

The Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena also filed a petition in the Supreme Court in the evening seeking quashing of Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari’s decision to swear-in Fadnavis without verifying their claims of support from sufficient number of MLAs.

They are seeking an immediate floor test to avoid "further horse trading"

as the Governor has reportedly given the BJP time till November 30 to prove its majority in the House.