Maharashtra chief minister-designate Ashok Chavan said that the security of his state would be his "top priority".

"The aam aadmi (common man) is not concerned with who is chief minister or the deputy chief minister. They just want the administration to be strong," Chavan, the son of former union home minister S. B. Chavan, said.

He said, "I will do everything to strengthen the state police force so that carnages of the kind that occurred last week were not repeated."

New Delhi/Mumbai, Dec. 5 : The Congress party today announced that Maharashtra Industries Minister Ashok Chavan will be the next chief minister of the state, even as signs of an open rebellion surfaced from the Narayan Rane camp.

Formally announcing the decision in New Delhi, senior party leader Pranab Mukherjee said that he and A. K. Antony, the General Secretary in charge of Maharashtra had gone to Mumbai to attend a meeting of the Maharashtra unit of the Congress as observers.

Ashok Chavan, Industry minister in the Vilasrao Deshmukh government and son of former Maharashtra chief minister SB Chavan seems to be the frontrunner in the race to the CM post in Maharashtra.

He is believed to have outrun revenue minister Narayan Rane even though Rane, who was the CM during the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance government in the late nineties, lobbied hard in a spirit of do-or-die.

Other contenders comprised Balasaheb Vikhe-Patil, MP and sugar baron and Union ministers Sushilkumar Shinde and Prithviraj Chavan.