Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) Maharashtra president Jayant Patil is among the leaders that party president Sharad Pawar has groomed for leadership and although the 62-year-old is known for his biting sarcasm while laying into political rivals, his ability to mend fences has seen him maintain good ties across the aisle too.
On Thursday, Patil, the youngest finance minister in Maharashtra’s history, was suspended for the entire Assembly Winter Session after he asked Speaker Rahul Narvekar “not to behave like a shameless person”. Though NCP leader Ajit Pawar urged that Patil not be suspended, the government did not relent.
In an interview to The Indian Express, “I did not call the Assembly Speaker shameless. I said ‘don’t act like one’. My suspension is nothing but a dictatorial manner of dealing with the Opposition when the ruling side is cornered.”
Patil’s father Rajaram Bapu Patil was a veteran Congress leader. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute in Mumbai and pursued his Master’s degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in the USA.
But he left all that to return home to Sangli following his father’s demise in 1984. He spent the following six years acquainting himself with grassroots politics. In 1990, he won his first Assembly election from Walwa in Sangli and has held the Assembly constituency Islampur-Walwa since then, becoming a seven-term legislator.
Patil is said to have brought a fresh perspective to politics and this, according to NCP insiders, brought him into Sharad Pawar’s radar. He was among the young leaders Pawar groomed and in 1999 when the former Chief Minister split from the Congress, Patil followed him to the NCP.
The highlight of Patil’s political career was the eight years he was in charge of Maharashtra’s finance department. In 1999, at the age of 39, he became the state’s youngest-ever finance minister and was at the helm of the treasury till 2008. After the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, then home minister RR Patil and the NCP entrusted the responsibility of the home department to Jayant Patil.
While as the state finance minister he pushed for fiscal discipline by curtailing excess expenditure, during his short stint as home minister he tried to strengthen the state intelligence department and modernise the police force. The “Force One” counter-terrorism unit of Mumbai Police came up during his tenure.
In 2009, Patil took charge as the rural development minister in the Congress-NCP government and held the portfolio till 2014, when the BJP came to power. Though rural development was viewed as a low-profile portfolio, it gained prominence during Patil’s tenure after he introduced initiatives such as eco-villages and e-panchayats.
Patil had another run as a minister after the 2019 Assembly elections when the NCP joined hands with the Congress and the Shiv Sena. He served as the minister for the water resources department in the coalition government.
