Former Maharashtra home minister RR Patil dies at 57

Former Maharashtra home minister and NCP leader Raosaheb Ramrao Patil today passed away at the Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai after a prolonged illness.

RR Patil was undergoing treatment for oral cancer at the Mumbai hospital.

Patil, who also served as the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, was operated upon last December at Breach Candy Hospital.

The 57-year-old Patil was shifted to the ICU in January and was on ventilator support for a long time.

In December, the NCP leader was admitted to the Bombay hospital following complaints of severe chest pain. It was revealed that he had a heart attack and was treated accordingly.

Prior to that, he also could not attend the entire state assembly session held in Nagpur in December due to a swollen jaw. He was treated at Breach Candy hospital for couple of weeks for the severe dental ailment.

Patil was considered the blue-eyed boy of NCP chief Sharad Pawar and was a popular face of the party in rural parts of the state due to his clean image.

His tenure as state home minister had been fairly controversial with him leading the ban on dance bars, which was consequently struck down by the Supreme Court. He had also been removed as the Home Minister after his comments on the 2008 terror strikes in Mumbai.

“Itne bade shahar mein chhota hadsa ho jata hai. To total failure nahi hai. (In big cities like this, small incidents do happen. It’s is not a total failure.),” he had said.

However, after the NCP-Congress swept back to victory in 2009 he was reinstated as the Home Minister.