Nana Patole

Some Lesser Known Facts About Nana Patole

• Nana is called “Messiah of the Poor” and has been actively involved in social work since his childhood. He mainly focuses on the issues faced by farmers and marginalized communities.

• Nana’s father opposed both ‘Khaki and Khadi’ but due to his rebellious nature, Nana joined politics despite facing opposition at home.

• Nana contested and won the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Bhandara-Gondia Lok Sabha Constituency on Bharatiya Janata Party’s ticket defeating then Union Minister Praful Patel by a margin of 149,254 votes.

• One of the key projects of Nana was the Durgabai Doh dam project on the Chulband River which provided irrigation to 9,634 hectares of farmland in the area benefiting the farmers. The project began in 1995 and was finished in 2015.

• In 2017, Nana criticised the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not taking farmer’s issues seriously in Maharashtra due to which he resigned from the party and his Lok Sabha seat.

  

• On 5 September 2022, Nana started an anti-encroachment movement against the government’s Forest-Land Act. About 10,000 tribal forest labourers took part in the movement in which Nana and 149 others were detained. In response to the arrests, Nana and his colleagues went on a hunger strike which resulted in the government suspending the encroachment removal program.