Short Biography - President of India Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil

Short Biography - President of India Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil

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Monday, May 31, 2010

Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil was born on December 19, 1934 in Nadgaon village of Jalgaon District, Maharashtra.



The Left and other allies of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) such as Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) announced their support on Patil's candidature for the post of President . Shiv Sena, an ally of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) also supported Patil's candidature.

Smt. Patil assumed office as the 12th President of India on July 25, 2007.
She is the first woman to have been elected to this august office.

Immediately prior to election as the President of India, Smt. Patil was the Governor of Rajasthan from November 8, 2004 till June 21, 2007.

Education:
Smt. Patil received her early education from RR Vidyalaya, Jalgaon and later obtained her Master's degree in Political Science and Economics from the Mooljee Jetha College, Jalgaon. Later, she obtained the degree of Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from Government Law College, Bombay (Mumbai).

Smt. Patil started her professional career as a practicing lawyer at the Jalgaon District Court

Political Career:

At the young age of 27 years, she successfully contested her first election to the Maharashtra State Legislature from the Jalgaon Assembly constituency.
Subsequently she was continuously elected four times as MLA from the Edlabad (Muktai Nagar) constituency till 1985.
Thereafter, she served as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha from 1985 to 1990 and later elected as a Member of Parliament to the 10th Lok Sabha in the 1991 General Elections from the Amravati constituency.

Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil in her long stint in Maharashtra has held various positions both in the Government and the Legislative Assembly of Maharashtra. She was:
Deputy Minister, Public Health, Prohibition, Tourism, Housing and Parliamentary Affairs, Government of Maharashtra from 1967 to 1972,
Cabinet Minister, Social Welfare, Government of Maharashtra from 1972 to 1974,
Cabinet Minister, Public Health and Social Welfare, Government of Maharashtra from 1974 to 1975,
Cabinet Minister, Prohibition, Rehabilitation and Cultural Affairs, Government of Maharashtra from 1975 to 1976,
Cabinet Minister, Education, Government of Maharashtra from 1977 to 1978,
Cabinet Minister, Urban Development and Housing, Government of Maharashtra from 1982 to 1983, and
Cabinet Minister, Civil Supplies and Social Welfare, Government of Maharashtra from 1983 to 1985.
While in the Opposition, she also served as the Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of Maharashtra from July 1979 to February 1980.

Family Life:
Smt. Patil is married to Dr. Devisingh Ramsingh Shekhawat.
Dr. Shekhawat obtained his Ph.D. in the discipline of Chemistry from Haffkine Institute, Mumbai.
He became the first Mayor of Amravati Municipal Corporation and he has also represented Amravati constituency as its MLA.
She has two children, a daughter, Smt. Jyoti Rathore and a son, Shri Rajendra Singh.

Together with her husband, she set up an educational institute, Vidya Bharati Shikshan Prasarak Mandal, which runs a chain of schools and colleges in Jalgaon and Mumbai

She has also set up Shram Sadhana Trust that runs hostels for working women in New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune and an engineering college in Jalgaon.

She also founded and was the chairwoman of a cooperative sugar factory known as Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana and a cooperative bank named after herself as Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank.

Controversies -

She forgot to salute to the Indian flag at a ceremonial reception for her in Mexico.

She has regular, expensive, state sponsored holiday trips with more than a dozen family members.

At a holiday trip in the Andaman Islands, more than 400 trees were chopped to make way for a helipad for the President's chopper.
Another 60 trees were felled as they would block the President's view of the beach.

On 22 June 2007, Rajni Patil, a professor of Marathi in a Jalgaon college, and the widow of murdered Jalgaon congressman Vishram G Patil in a press conference claimed that her husband was murdered by Pratibha Patil's brother G.N.Patil. She accused Pratibha Patil of shielding her brother.

Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank, a cooperative bank set up by Pratibha Patil in 1973 in her name, to empower women, had its license revoked in 2003 by the Reserve Bank of India for alleged financial irregularities.
Reasons cited were as follows –
Faulty loan policy of the bank and loan interest waivers given, among others, to Pratibha Patil's relatives

A cooperative sugar factory - Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana - of which Pratibha was a founder member, was found to be a drug trafficking ring, was declared a defaulter for failing to repay a Rs 17.5 crore (Rs 175 million) bank loan.
The loan was taken in 1994 when Pratibha was its chairwoman, but the factory has failed to repay the full amount. The bank sealed the factory on 23 January 2007 after issuing many reminders.

In 2002 the chief commissioner of central excise and customs, Pune, issued notice to the factory for evading excise duty resulting from diversion of export-oriented sugar by the factory into domestic market.

As Member of Parliament from Amravati between 1991 and 1996 Pratibha Patil had diverted Rs 36 lakh (Rs 3.6 million) from her MPLADS fund to a trust run by her husband Devisingh Shekhawat. This was in violation of Government rules which barred MPs from providing funds to organization run by their relatives.

Patil claims to have spoken to the spirit of the deceased leader (Baba Lekhraj of the at their headquarters in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.