Former Union Minister Babagouda Patil passes away

Bengaluru,21 May(HS): Former Union Minister Babagouda Rudragouda Patil passed away this morning at a private hospital in Belagavi. He was 80 years old.

According to family sources, he was rushed to the hospital following sudden fluctuations in his blood pressure about a week back.

It goes to the credit of Babagouda Patil as the only Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha(KRRS) leader to get elected from the Kittur Assembly constituency in the Belagavi district and adjoining Dharwad Rural constituency of Dharwad district in the maiden attempt during the 1989 general elections.

The Farmers’ Association led by Prof MD Nanjundaswamy, a law professor had unnerved the then Ramakrishna Hegde-led Janata Party government by calling for massive protests at the state capital and elsewhere across the state every now and then.

Thanks to the tremendous response to the Farmers’ movement during the early Eighties, it was also construed as one of the major factors responsible for the severe drubbing of the R Gundu Rao-led Congress government during the 1983 polls.

After prolonged discussions, rifts and splits the KRRS at last resolved to venture into electoral politics, daydreaming of assuming power. It contested a majority of the seats but ended up winning only in two constituencies by Babagouda Patil.

He later relinquished the Dharwad Rural seat which reelected the KRRS nominee and state president Prof MD Nanjundaswamy.

Babagouda Patil later joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and won from the Belagavi Lok Sabha constituency during 1998. He was also inducted into the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA cabinet as a Minister of State for Rural Development.

In 2000 he joined the Janata Dal-Secular regional party only to desert it in 2013. However, he supported Congress during the recently held Belagavi Lok Sabha constituency by-polls, claiming that this was the only way to resist the anti-farmer policies of the Union government.