A former constable, CR Patil has scripted a historic win for Gujarat in the 2022 Assembly elections. The state party chief is a veteran politician who was the mastermind behind the BJP campaign. But who is CR Patil?
C.R. Patil – A Three Time Parliamentarian from Gujarat.
Maharashtra Born Gujarati?
On March 16, 1955, Chandrakant Raghunath Patil was born in a small village near Jalgaon, Maharashtra. His father, who was a head constable, had migrated from their hometown in Maharashtra to South Gujarat. He finished his schooling at ITI Surat.
Patil, just like his father, began his career as a constable in 1075. After serving as a member of the police force, he resigned owing to his interest in becoming a corporator.
C.R. Patil with Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Soon after resigning from his job, Patil started a Gujarati Daily named ‘Navgujarat Times’. However, he was not quite destined to be in the field of journalism for long.
Entry into the politics
Besides starting a daily in Gujarati, Patil also entered the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1989, after leaving his job. Given his background and experience with the police forces, he was made the BJP treasurer of Surat.
From being in the opposite camp of the then BJP heavyweight Narendra Modi to join his camp, Patil was quick to rise the ranks. They started working together in 1995 when Modi served as the State General Secretary.
One of his first major jobs of Patil upon entering politics was serving as a chairman of State PSY Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Limited (GACL) in 1998.
C.R. Patil in Sansad
A new constituency of Navsari was created in 2009. Patil gained his chance to book his first ticket to Delhi through the same, and he did it quite handsomely. Patil went on to win from the same constituency for the next 2 terms – 2014 and 2019. In 2014, he won by a humongous margin of 5.58 lakh votes, which was the third-highest number of votes in the entire country.
C.R. Patil with Prime Minister Modi
C.R. Patil was made the Party Chief in June 2020, and winning the Assembly Elections is the first major victory for the incumbent MP in his new innings.
Controversies
C.R. Patil joined the police force in 1975, and within two years he got into trouble. When a liquor hoard was recovered from the bootlegger’s house. Patil’s name surfaced in the same matter.
In his early years of politics, Patil was arrested by the Crime Branch in 2002. He was named the chief defaulter in the Diamond Jubilee Cooperative Bank scam. He had defaulted from repaying a loan of more than Rs. 54 crores.
Credits – Punjab News Express
During the second wave of the COVID-19 virus, C.R. Patil procured Remdesivir injection from the Pharma company and distributed it for free among the poor and needy. The opposition took up the matter stating that the medical injections were distributed without a license from the Pharma authorities.
