CR Patil is new President of Gujarat unit of BJP

Surat: Chandrakant Raghunath Patil (67), a member of Navsari Lok Sabha seat has been appointed President of Gujarat unit of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Patil will replace Jitu Vaghani who has completed his term. Known for his hard-work and result oriented approach, Patil is considered Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s taskmaster. BJP will go to the next assembly general elections in December 2022 under Patil’s leadership. Patil’s first challenge will be 8-seat bypolls of Gujarat assembly that are likely to take place in upcoming September. All these 8 seats were won by Congress in 2017 general elections of State assembly. Patil will also need to fill the gap between party organization and the State government, which has been increasingly felt since the results of last year’s 6-seat assembly by-polls. With Patil’s appointment, South Gujarat has after a long time got a chance to represent the top post of party in the State after Kashiram Rana. Patil is Marathi and with his appointment the leadership has indicated caste-less and merit-based approach. Patil today in reply to media’s query said, he was born in 1955 in Mumbai state and Gujarat was part of Mumbai state at that time. Gujarat and Maharashtra came into existence as separate states only in 1960. He said, being Marathi has never been an issue on any occasion all these years. He added that the people of Gujarat have elected him time and again, also with highest lead nationwide in 2019. It’s worth noting that Patil, a two-time MP from Navsari, won a third term last year beating the Congress’ Dharmeshbhai Patel by 6.9 lakh votes. Patil’s victory was the highest winning margin in this Lok Sabha election. Patil improved on his 2014 performance when he had won the constituency by 5.58 lakh votes. Patil’s victory margin nearly beat the highest ever in Indian electoral history. That distinction is still with the BJP’s Pritam Munde, who won her father Gopinath Munde’s bastion of Beed, by a margin of 6.96 lakh votes in the bypoll after his death in 2014.

More about CR Patil (by Japan K Pathak)

Patil’s father came to Surat from Maharashtra for job purpose in 1951. Patil family lived in Killapardi, Navsai, Bardoli, Madhi, Rander, Dumas, Sachin etc places in South Gujarat. Patil completed ITI education in Surat. His father was transferred to Surat in 1971. Patil was born in 1955 near Jalgaon. Patil says Gujarat-Maharashtra both were one-state when he was born. He says four generations of his family have been settled in Gujarat (CR’s father, CR, CR’s daughters and grand children).

Patil worked as police constable and head constable for 15 years. He says police force’s discipline has helped him in political life. Patil resigned from Police job in 1989 when he was 35. Patil says he joined BJP on invitation of Narendrabhai Modi. He was offered party scarf by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in a public meeting in Surat. Patil had joined politics with aim to contest civic elections in 1992 from Surat but due to demolition of Babri structure in Ayodhya that could not happen.

Patil was made Chairman of Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) and Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd (GACL), and he has said it time and again that he was chosen by Narendrabhai for these posts.

In 2009 in spite of case against him related to bank loan, Patil was chosen by Narendrabhai to contest the Lok Sabha election. Patil explains the bank loan case against him. He says he had taken loan to do a project which failed. There was no bad motive involved on his part. No suspicious cash transactions had taken place. Patil says he faced no chargesheet and charges were not framed against him. The High Court had cleared him from allegations. He repaid the money with interest.

Patil says he has no bad habit. He has not consumed even paan or sopari in life.

Patil believes that connectivity with people is very important. He says he can’t take every call due to meetings, but he dials back later, the act which if not satisfy the caller, at least don’t make him upset.

Patil was first MP to have his office certified as ISO. He says once he visited then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s office and saw ‘ISO’ written outside. He thought he should also make his office ISO standard. He returned Surat and approached Moodys to make his office ISO standard. Patil’s office as Navsari MP is audited by Moody’s every three months. The analysis reports by agency offer great insights, he says.

Patil had once led ‘plane roko’ agitation, demanding flight connectivity and full functional airport in Surat. Patil and other agitators had booked tickets in a group. Instead of boarding the plane, they stopped it in agitation style to highlight the demand. Patil says, this idea was based on earlier success of train roko agitation, thanks to which Surat had got number of new trains.

Patil had been in local media business also for a while by starting NavGujarat Times newspaper in 1991 and Eye Witness TV channel later.

Prime Minister Modi had given responsibility of villages he had adopted as Lok Sabha member of Varanasi to CR Patil. Like every time, Narendrabhai’s tested and proven taskmaster did this job also with dedication and perfection in result-oriented manner.

DeshGujarat