Pratibha Patil

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Her Excellency
Pratibha Patil
पपपपपपप पपपपप

President of India

Incumbent

Assumed office
25 July 2007

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari

Preceded by Abdul Kalam

 Governor of Rajasthan

In office
8 November 2004 – 23 July 2007

Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje

Preceded by Madan Lal Khurana

Succeeded by Akhlaqur Rahman Kidwai

Born 19 December 1934(age 76)

Nadgaon, British Raj (nowIndia)

Political party Indian National Congress

Spouse(s) Devisingh Shekhawat

Alma mater Mooljee Jetha College, Jalgaon

Government Law College, Mumbai

Profession Lawyer

Religion Hinduism

Pratibha Devisingh Patil (Marathi: पितभा देवीिसंह पाटील) (born 19 December 1934) is
the 12th and current President of the Republic of India and first woman to hold the office.
She was sworn in as President of India on 25 July 2007, succeeding Dr. A.P.J. Abdul
Kalam and after beating her rival Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.[1][2][3]

She is a member of the Indian National Congress (INC), was nominated for the
presidency by the ruling United Progressive Alliance and Indian Left.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Early life
• 2 Career
• 3 Presidential Election 2007
 • 4 Presidency
o 4.1 Philanthrophy

• 5 Controversies
o 5.1 BJP campaign
o 5.2 Legal challenges to candidature
o 5.3 Refutation

 5.3.1 Allegations of shielding her brother on a murder charge

 5.3.2 Pratibha Women Cooperative Bank
 5.3.3 Sant Muktabai Cooperative Sugar Factory
o 5.4 Party loyalty

 5.4.1 Shrama Sadhna Trust

 5.4.2 MPLADS
o 5.5 Views on sterilisation
o 5.6 Divine indication

• 6 Positions held
• 7 See also

• 8 References

[edit]Early life
Pratibha Patil was born in Nadgaon village of Jalgaon District, Maharashtra.[citation
needed]
She was educated at RR Vidyalaya, Jalgaon and later obtained her master’s
degree in political science and economics from the Mooljee Jetha College,
JalgaonMooljee Jaitha College in Jalgaon, which was then affiliated with the University
of Pune.[citation needed] She pursued her studies as a law student while holding her position
as an MLA. Later, she obtained a law degree from the Government Law College,
Mumbai Government Law College.[citation needed]

[edit]Career

Pratibha Patil started her professional career[when?] as a practising lawyer at the Jalgaon
District Court and worked on various social activities, especially, for the upliftment of
poor women.[citation needed]

She successfully contested her first election for political office at the age of 27, fighting
for the Jalgaon Assembly constituency. She was elected four times consecutively
for Edlabad,Maharashtra as a member of the Maharashtra Legislative
Assembly between 1962 and 1985. Thereafter, she served as a Member of Parliament
in the Rajya Sabha from 1985 to 1990. In 1991 she was elected as a Member of
Parliament in the tenth Lok Sabha, representing theAmravati constituency and stayed in
the role until 1996. She has the distinction of not having lost a single election that she
contested to date.[citation needed]

She was the 24th Governor of Rajasthan between 2004–2007, and the first woman to
hold that office.[citation needed]

[edit]Presidential Election 2007

Main article: Indian presidential election, 2007

On 14 June 2007, United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the ruling alliance of political
parties in India headed by the Indian National Congress, and the Indian left nominated
her as their candidate for the Presidential Election to be held in July that year.[4] She
emerged as a compromise candidate after the Left parties would not agree to the
nomination of former Home Minister Shivraj Patil. UPA chairwoman Sonia
Gandhi proposed her: her loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family was widely perceived to be
a major factor in her nomination.[5] With the possibility that she might become the first
female President of India, Gandhi described her nomination as a "historic occasion".[citation
needed]

Before leaving Jaipur for New Delhi, she thanked Gandhi for choosing her and said that
her first job as president would be to make theNational Rural Employment Guarantee
Act (NREGA) started by UPA a success.[6] In Delhi she asserted that she would not be a
rubber stamp president.[5]

She faced Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the NDA[clarification needed] candidate, in a straight
contest.[citation needed] Her campaign was boosted by the decision of UNPA to abstain from
voting.[citation needed]

The Leader of the Opposition, L K Advani, unsuccessfully sought the intervention

of Election Commission of India to force Patil to declare her assets.[clarification needed][7]

Shiv Sena, an important ally of NDA, declared its support of Patil on the grounds that
she would be the first Maharashtrian to hold the office. This decision caused problems
for the BJP-Sena alliance.[8][clarification needed]

[edit]Presidency
 Presidential styles of
Pratibha Patil

Reference style Her Excellency Pratibha Patil, President of the

Republic of India

Spoken style President Patil

Alternative style Madame President

She won the presidential election held on 19 July 2007 defeating her nearest rival
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat by over 300,000 votes. She took office as India's first woman
president on 25 July 2007.

This section requires expansion.

[edit]Philanthrophy

Along with her husband, she set up Vidya Bharati Shikshan Prasarak Mandal, an
educational institute which runs a chain of schools and colleges in Amravati, Jalgaon
and Mumbai.[9] She also set up Shram Sadhana Trust, which runs hostels for working
women in New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune; and an engineering college in Jalgaon.[9] She
also founded a cooperative sugar factory known as Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar
Karkhana and a cooperative bank named after herself as Pratibha Mahila Sahakari
Bank. The bank ceased trading in February 2003 due to having its license revoked as a
consequence of financial irregularities.[10]

[edit]Controversies

[edit]BJP campaign
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have opposed her in its political campaigning. BJP
leader Arun Shourie wrote two articles published as a booklet titled Does This Tainted
Person Deserve to Become President of India?,[11] and another BJP leader, Arun Jaitley,
announced[when?]the launch of a website called Know Pratibha Patil, which contains
various media reports and documents concerning the alleged questionable financial
dealings of both Patil and her family.[12]

While the BJP tried to build a strong moral opposition to her nomination in 2007, it was
advised not to challenge the nomination on legal grounds.[13]

[edit]Legal challenges to candidature

A Public Interest Litigation was filed before the Supreme Court of India challenging her
2007 presidential nomination. The claim was referred to the various allegations against
Patil and her family members and sought the cancellation of her nomination papers on
the constitutional grounds of her being an undischarged bankrupt who had not cleared a
debt to the public exchequer and others.[14][15]

The court ruled that it could not act on unsubstantiated allegations, and rejected the
petition as being without merit at the admission stage.[16][17] Furthermore, it queried the
intention of the petitioner and said that it was more of a "private interest litigation".[18] The
court ruled:

This petition is filed under Article 32 of the Constitution. We find no ground to

“ interfere and exercise our jurisdiction. However, this will not prevent the petitioner
from approaching appropriate authorities for redressal of his grievances.[5] ”
The petitioner then approached the Election Commission of India seeking her
disqualification. The Election Commission response was that:

The question whether a person has become insolvent and whether he/she is still an
“ undischarged insolvent has to be decided by the competent insolvency court under
the provisions of the Provincial Insolvency Act, 1920, and not by the Commission.
The Commission is not the appropriate forum. No action is called for on the part of
the Commission on your representation.[19] ”
Following this, the petitioner again approached the court, contending that the Election
Commission had not applied its mind to the matter,[clarification needed] and sought quashing of
the commission's order.[20][clarification needed]

In another case a Delhi-based NGO has also filed a petition[when?] before the Delhi High
Court alleging that Patil being Managing Trustee of Mumbai-based Shram Sadhana
Bombay Trust, which is under the control of state government, was holding the office of
profit making her ineligible to contest the President's election.[21] The High Court deferred
the hearing until after election.[clarification needed]

[edit]Refutation

The leaders of Indian National Congress and Indian left tried to repudiate these charges.
[22]
They have also said that these issues have never been raised in the past while she
was a deputy chairwoman of the Rajya Sabha, or during her tenure as a governor. They
accused the BJP of launching a "malicious, unsubstantiated and deliberate" slanderous
campaign just to damage her reputation.[23][24][25] Prime MinisterManmohan
Singh defended Pratibha Patil and dismissed the charges as "mud-slinging".[26] On
Monday 2 July 2007 breaking her silence Patil described the allegations leveled against
her as "false, malicious and baseless".[27]

Prominent allegations against her that have been controversial are:

[edit]Allegations of shielding her brother on a murder charge

Main article: Vishram Patil murder case

On 22 June 2007, Rajni Patil, a professor at a Jalgaon college, claimed that Pratibha
Patil's brother G.N.Patil was the person who had murdered her husband, Jalgaon
congressman Vishram G Patil. She accused Pratibha Patil of shielding her brother. She
further said that she had provided details of her allegations to Sonia Gandhi and
President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. Copies of her letter to the President were distributed to
the press by Sudheendra Kulkarni, an aide of Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani.[28][29]

On 13 July 2007 Rajani Patil petitioned the Bombay High Court, demanding that
the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigate Pratibha Patil and her brother in
connection with the allegations before the presidential election. The court directed the
CBI accordingly in order to remove the possibility that presidential immunity might come
into play if Prabitha Patil were elected.[30][clarification needed]

The lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani said that two CDs have surfaced which contain
incriminating material against Patil's brother. The CDs contain footage of the elections
for the district Congress presidentship in Jalgaon. Jethmalani offered to place both CDs
on record, saying "These contain vital information showing the political link behind the
murder."[31]

[edit]Pratibha Women Cooperative Bank

Main article: Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank
Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank was a cooperative bank set up by Patil in 1973 to
empower women.[citation needed] The license for it to operate as a bank was revoked in 2003
by the Reserve Bank of India for alleged financial irregularities. Among the irregularities
listed were the loans policy of the bank and loan interest waivers given, among others, to
Patil's relatives.[32] Patil was one of the chairpersons of the bank and a number of her
relatives were also directors.[citation needed]

She is currently[when?] one of 34 respondents in a legal case at the Bombay High

Court relating to allegations of mismanagement of the bank and misappropriation of
funds by its directors.[33][34]

In her defence, her supporters point out that she was not the founding president[35] of the
bank, and that she held the job of the chairwoman for a little over a month.[36] They also
point out that the RBI has never mentioned Patil's name in the report,[37] and the court
has not charge-sheeted her.[38] Communist leader A.B. Bardhan cast doubts on the
credibility of the official employees' union of the bank, which has been highlighting the
issue of mismanagement since 2002, drawing attention to the fact that it is associated
with the BMS union led by the BJP.[38]

[edit]Sant Muktabai Cooperative Sugar Factory

Main article: Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana

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.[39] Pratibha Patil
had been its chairwoman and director until she became the Governor of Rajasthan.
[40]
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. This was the second occasion the mill had been sealed.
Earlier, it was sealed in January 2006, but was reopened after the board of directors
headed by G. N. Patil - younger brother of Pratibha Patil - requested for an opportunity
to improve the performance of the mill.[41]

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.

Dubbing as "malign campaign" the allegations, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar,
defended Pratibha and noted that there was never any enquiry under Maharashtra
Cooperative Societies Act against her. He also pointed out that as many as 74 mills
were issued notices in December 2006, and it was "unfortunate that only one particular
case has been brought up in the media". Pawar said most of the mills had failed to repay
the loans because of persistent drought affecting sugarcane production, leading these
mills to go sick.[42]

Nevertheless in 2007, Manohar Lal Sharma, an independent advocate, filed a public

interest litigation petition in the Supreme Court alleging that Mrs Pratibha Patil was an
undischarged insolvent relating to the Sant Muktabai Sugar Factory and hence
disqualified to remain in the office of the presidency.[43]

[edit]Party loyalty
In February 2011, Rajasthan state minister Amin Khan addressing a meeting of the
district INC party was quoted by the local media[44] as saying Pratibha Patil was
rewarded with the presidency because "she used to make tea and cook food at Indira
Gandhi's residence" without expecting anything in return.[45] Khan later said that he was
misquoted and did not mean any disrespect, and resigned from his post over the
controversy.[46]

[edit]Shrama Sadhna Trust

[edit]MPLADS

It was alleged that as a Member of Parliament for Amravati between 1991 and 1996 Patil
diverted Rs 36 lakh (Rs 3.6 million) from herMPLADS fund to a trust run by her husband
Devisingh Shekhawat. This was in violation of Government rules which barred MPs from
providing funds to organisation run by their relatives.[47][48][clarification needed]

[edit]Views on sterilisation
On 10 December 1975, when she was the Health Minister of Maharashtra, Patil
advocated in Maharashtra Assembly that people withhereditary diseases should be
compulsorily sterilised.[49][clarification needed]

[edit]Divine indication
Patil claims to have spoken to the spirit of the deceased leader (Baba Lekhraj[50]) at their
headquarters in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.[50]

"Dadiji ke shareer mein baba aye ... Maine unse baat ki (Baba entered Devi’s body and
he communicated to me through her)," she said on TV camera.[51] Reporters began to
report on the message she received of a "divine indication" of great responsibility coming
her way.[52]

[edit]Positions held

Pratibha Patil in North-east India

Period Position

Deputy Minister,N.H.E.A.,Scav, Public Health, Prohibition, Tourism,

1967-72
Housing & Parliamentary Affairs, Government of Maharashtra

1972-74 Cabinet Minister, Social Welfare, Government of Maharashtra

Cabinet Minister, Public Health & Social Welfare, Government of

1974-75
Maharashtra

Cabinet Minister, Prohibition, Rehabilitation and Cultural Affairs,

1975-76
Government of Maharashtra

1977-78 Cabinet Minister, Education, Government of Maharashtra

July 1979 to February

Leader of Opposition, CDP (I), Maharashtra Legislative Assembly
1980

Cabinet Minister, Urban Development and Housing, Government of

1982-85
Maharashtra
 Cabinet Minister, Civil Supplies and Social Welfare, Government of
1983-85
Maharashtra

18 November 1986 to 5
Deputy Chairman, Rajya Sabha
November 1988

Chairperson, Committee of Privileges, Rajya Sabha; Member, Business

1986-88
Advisory Committee, Rajya Sabha

1991-96 Chairperson, House Committee, Lok Sabha

8 November 2004-June
Governor of Rajasthan
2007

25 July 2007 to date President of India