MUMBAI: The BJP-led minority government in Maharashtra will probe all scams, including Adarsh and irrigation, regardless of the outside support it has from Sharad Pawar’s NCP, Devendra Fadnavis told TOI in an exclusive interview stretching over two and half hours, his first after being chosen by his party to be chief minister.

“I think we will not require NCP’s support. But even if we do, I will probe every single scam,” he said.

Asked about the Adarsh scam in which four former CMs and nine bureaucrats were indicted by an inquiry commission, he said, “If the (panel’s) report has evidential value and can be used in court, I will act on it.”

He would also review decisions taken by his predecessor Prithviraj Chavan during the Congress-NCP combine’s last few months in office and “stay every decision not in public interest,” he said.

Outlining his policy priorities, he said he would bring in a Right to Service Act that would empower citizens by making delivery of services time-bound and officials accountable. The government would publish a citizens’ charter giving information about all the services it would provide, deadlines for delivery, and legal recourse that citizens could take if officials failed to act. Pushing infrastructure projects, attracting investments, reviving manufacturing, revamping the power sector, and improving agricultural productivity would be his other focus areas for the state, he said.

Responding to a question about his plans for Mumbai, Fadnavis said he would push for environmental clearance for the Trans-Harbour link and appoint a separate officer for Mumbai, just one rank junior to the chief secretary, to co-ordinate the work of 17 agencies that work on the city’s roads.

To reverse the decline in higher education, he said his government would bring in a comprehensive fee regulatory authority so that academic institutions could be freed from the stranglehold of ‘shikshan samrats’ (education barons) and placed in the safe hands of ‘shikshan maharshis’.

When TOI mentioned that he had the image of being a ‘nice’ person, and if this coupled with his lack of administrative experience and his relative youth could prove to be a handicap, he said, “I am normally a very soft person, but in administration I will be ruthless.” When it was suggested that not everyone around him might have the highest standards of integrity, he said the BJP central leadership in New Delhi had asked him to be ruthless as CM as “the mandate was against corruption.” He stressed that his “actions” would “speak louder than words”.

The politician in him has been in the public eye, but Fadnavis the person too emerged during the interview. He spoke of his love for music, of the “2,000 songs” he knows by heart, and said power could never go to his head because of the values instilled in him by his father, the late Gangadhar Fadnavis who had been member of the legislative council.