Pratibha Patil was the first woman to be elected to the presidential position in India. She served in that position from the year 2007 to 2012 and headed one of the world’s largest democracies with her innate calm and composed demeanour. She was preceded by the enigmatic president of India, the scientist APJ Abdul Kalam, and succeeded by Pranab Mukherjee. She held her position in the Rashtrapati Bhawan with unaffected gentleness, dignity, and perseverance which helped her to successfully discredit criticisms that were hurled against her by her opponents. Throughout her life, she has always believed in the grit and potential of the rural population and has always wanted to do something substantial to promote their growth and overall well-being.
Early life
Pratibha Patil was born on 19th December 1934 in Jalgaon. Having lost her mother at the early age of 12, she was brought up under the strict supervision of her aunt who made sure that she acquired knowledge of all the traditional customs of their community and assimilated all the religious rituals from a very young age. Being brought up by strong female and male members of the family, Pratibha Patil grew up to be a strong-willed and disciplined adult who was also a very thoughtful and caring person at the same time. Her father decided to keep the promise that he had made to his wife on her deathbed that he would educate their only girl child so that she could become a self-dependent woman with a strong mind and personality.
Interestingly, her knack for politics was first felt in her maiden speech at the Rajput convention in Chalisgaon where the community elders were incredibly impressed by everything that she had said.
Education
Pratibha Patil received her initial education at R R Vidyalaya in Jalgaon, Maharashtra. After completing her graduation, she went on to complete her Master’s degree in Economics and Political Science from Moolji Jaitha College in Jalgaon. She also earned her Bachelor’s degree in Law from the Government Law College, Bombay. Even after she got selected as an active MLA, she continued to pursue her studies as a law student.
As a student in her college days, Pratibha Patil was very active in curricular activities such as sports. She had a special flair for table tennis which fetched her several shields at the intercollege tournaments.
Career as a lawyer
Once Pratibha Patil completed her studies of law, she started practising as an active lawyer at the Jalgaon district court. From there, her journey as an active social worker started as she took up various social issues that plagued society and started working on them. As a lawyer, her specific area with respect to social work involved women empowerment, environment, rural development and education. Her principal aim has been to work for the underprivileged sections of society, the children, and the women and it was these involvements that led her to get inducted into a full-fledged career as a lawyer and later as a career politician.
Career in politics
Pratibha Patil’s career in politics started at the young age of 27 when she contested her first elections from the constituency of the Jalgaon assembly in the Maharashtra state legislature. She continued to serve as the youngest member in the Maharashtra legislative assembly from the year 1962 to 1967. After that, she became the Deputy Minister of the Government of Maharashtra in the year 1967 and continued to be so until she was made a cabinet minister in the year 1972. Her winning stint as an MLA continued for the next four consecutive periods till 1985. During this period, Patil got a chance to work for various departments including housing, public health, tourism, parliamentary affairs, cultural affairs, rehabilitation, education, social welfare and urban development and housing. After serving as an active MP, she further got elected as an MP in the 1991 general elections from the Amravati constituency. Her entire career as a politician has never seen failure or defeat in any election on record and she has continued to maintain her long stint in Maharashtra politics for a very long time. After accomplishing a very fulfilling career at the state level of Maharashtra, Patil decided to take her political resume a notch higher and moved to the Union Parliament and successfully gained membership in both Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
Tenure as the President of India
She became the first female president of India in the year 2007. But throughout her term, she had to encounter several controversies and challenges. She set a record in granting life to 235 petitioners of death sentences. Patil's tenure as the President of India for five years was trailed by a lot of controversies including her questionable use of government funds for personal use. She allegedly spent public funds to build a retirement mansion in Pune and even reportedly expressed her desire to claim an official government car and fuel allowance for a private car.
Public life
Throughout her public life, Patil was involved with several organisations that served in vivid capacities. She was the chairperson of the Maharashtra State Water Pollution Control Board between the years 1982-1985. She served as the president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress committee between the years 1988- 1990. She was also the director and vice-chairperson of the National Federation of Urban Cooperative Banks and Credit Societies. She has also been an active member of the Governing Council, the National Cooperative Union of India, and chairperson, of the 20-point programme implementation committee, of the Government of Maharashtra. Her public life is also adorned with various participations in international forums like the social welfare conferences in Nairobi and Puerto Rico. In fact, she was the leader of the Indian delegation to the Commonwealth Presiding Officers Conference in London in 1988 on the 'status of women’. She was also an active delegate to the World Women’s Conference held in Beijing, China in the year 1995. The public life of Patil is embellished with several social and cultural activities that she had been a part of quite intensively. The ones that topped the list of these activities include setting up of hostels for working women in Delhi and Mumbai; Industrial Training School for the visually disabled in Jalgaon; Engineering College at Jalgaon for the youth of the rural sector; schools for the Nomadic Tribes and children of backward classes in the Amravati district. and a Farmers Training Centre in Maharashtra.
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