Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Nana F Patole who resigned from his post on Thursday now has been appointed as the new President of Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee.
Nana Bhau as he is fondly called as submitted resignation to Deputy Speaker Narhari S Zhirwal, after a tenure of almost 14 months in the post. Patole had met both Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP leaders before presenting his resignation as Speaker on Thursday.
Patole, a legislator from Sakoli in Bhandara district was a Congress MLA for three consecutive terms - from 1999-2014 - before he left the Congress to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In 2014 Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket, he emerged winner by defeating Nationalist Congress Party senior leader Prafull Patel. Patole was the earliest and first to openly revolt against Prime Minister Narendra Modi after which he resigned as BJP MP and left the party. Fast forward, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he was beaten from the Nagpur seat by Vidarbha BJP committed and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari.
In October 2019, Patole contested and won the Sakoli seat to enter the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and was later elected the Speaker after the MVA government took the control over state in November 2019.
Before being chosen as the Speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly in December 2019, he was the Kisan Congress Chief. A former BJP MP had strongly criticised Narendra Modi, party leaders in Centre and state governments and had quit the party and his seat in December 2017.
