[9] Joshi became the first non-Congress Chief Minister of Maharashtra when the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition came to power in 1995.

[10] Technically, Sharad Pawar led the first non-Congress government in Maharashtra in 1978[citation needed] as a member of Socialist Indian National Congress.

[citation needed] However, Joshi, then a part of the BJP-Sena government called the report "anti-Hindu, pro-Muslim and biased" and refused to adopt the commission's recommendations.

[11][12] As Chief Minister, he had permitted the release of a plot of land in Pune, reserved for a school, to a builder with ties to his son-in-law, Girish Vyas.

Sustained legal efforts by Vijay Kumbhar, an RTI activist from Pune,[14] led to Joshi's resignation in January 1999.

In March 2009, Bombay High Court passed a verdict calling the housing complex illegal.