Sunil Tatkare is Maharashtra NCP chief

Mumbai, June 25 (IANS) Senior leader and Maharashtra minister Sunil D. Tatkare was Wednesday unanimously elected the new president of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the state.

Outgoing chief Bhaskar Jadhav proposed Tatkare's name and executive president Jitendra Awhad seconded it. This was unanimously approved at the party's executive committee meeting.

Hailing from the coastal Konkan region, Tatkare, 58, has been a minister since 1999 in the Congress-NCP alliance governments handling different portfolios.

Last month, he lost the Lok Sabha election from Raigad by a narrow margin of around 2,100 votes to Shiv Sena's Anant Geete, now a union minister.

The NCP decided on the change of guard ahead of the Maharashtra assembly elections this year.