JOIN USDilip Walse Patil is Maharashtra's new Home Minister
Starting off as a personal assistant to Sharad Pawar, the new Home Minister of Maharashtra, Dilip Walse Patil, has a tough task at hand to set the house in order.
Anil Deshmukh's departure has surely impacted the NCP, his party and also the tri-party coalition. Perhaps, the soft-spoken, non-controversial, no-nonsense 64-year-old seven-time MLA is the best suited for the job.
In the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government, Walse Patil was handling two key portfolios – Excise and Labour.
While NCP’s Hasan Mushrif has been given the Labour portfolio, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who will hold the Excise portfolio along with Finance and Planning.
There were several who could have fit the bill – the Pawar junior himself, state NCP president and Water Resources and Command Area Development Minister Jayant Patil and Public Health and Family Welfare Rajesh Tope.
The general consensus was that Tope could not be discharged as Maharashtra is reeling under the Covid-19 pandemic and Patil himself has twin responsibilities – party and government. The NCP supremo wanted someone loyal to him and also who has a ‘Mr Clean’ image – for it the best was Walse-Patil.
Walse Patil hails from Ambegaon in the Pune district.
His father Dattatray Walse Patil has been a former Congress MLA and Pawar’s friend. In 1990, Patil defeated Kisanrao Bankhele in Ambegaon and entered the Assembly for the first time. In 1999, when Pawar formed the NCP, he joined it and was part of the second-rung leadership.
In the erstwhile Democratic Front government, Walse Patil has held multiple portfolios including Finance and Planning, Energy, Higher and Technical Education, Medical Education from 1999-2009.
From 2009-2014, he was the Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Council – and his performance has been appreciated both by the Treasury and Opposition benches.
He is currently serving as the president of the National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories Limited (NFCSF).