17 March 2020 was the 74th Birthday of Prithviraj Chavan, the Indian politician who served as the 17th Chief Minister of Maharashtra in India from November 2010 to September 2014.
Chavan became the 17th chief minister of the State of Maharashtra after serving five positions in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, notably the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Prithviraj Chavan Biography
Prithviraj Chavan was born on 17 March 1946 in Indore, Madhya Pradesh to Dajisaheb Chavan and Premala. He has two younger sisters, Nirupama Ajitrao Yadav-Deshmukh and Vidyulata Venkatrao Ghorpade.
Chavan attended a local Municipal Marathi-medium school in Karad and Nutan Marathi School in Delhi. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani in 1967. In the same year, he was selected for a UNESCO scholarship in Germany and further moved to the US for post-graduation in Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His early career involved in working as a design engineer in a US firm where he specialised on defence electronics, anti-submarine warfare, computer storage systems, and computerisation of Indian languages.
Chavan’s father Dajisaheb Chavan was a member of the Lok Sabha from the Karad constituency from 1957 to 1973 and was also a Minister in the cabinets of Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi. Following the death of Dajisaheb in 1973, his mother, Premala contested and elected from her late husband’s constituency in 1973. Premala continued the position with the general elections of 1977, 1984, and 1989 and served till her death in 1991.
Prithviraj Chavan Political Career
Most of Chavan’s adult life was served in the Indian National Congress bureaucracy as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Indian Parliament and later as the architect of the civil nuclear liability bill.
Chavan entered his political career in 1991 after his meeting with Rajiv Gandhi following the death of his mother. He was elected as the Member of Parliament for Karad Constituency that her mother held till death. He won the seat for three consecutive terms in 1991, 1996 and 1998. However, he lost the seat in 1999. He then served as a Member of the Consultative Committee in the Ministry of Science and Technology from 1991 to 1992, Member in the Committee on Science and Technology in Ministry of Environment and Forests from 1992 to 1993, Member of Standing Committee on Finance and Planning from 1994 to 1996 and Member of Committee on Provision of Computers to Members of Parliament from 1996 to 1999.
In 2000, he was elected as the Spokesperson of All India Congress Committee which he continued till 2001 and afterwards served as a Member of the Consultative Committee for the Ministry of Defence from 2002 and held the position of Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office from 2004 to 2010. He got elected as the 17th Chief Minister of Maharashtra in November 2010 and resigned as the chief minister of Maharashtra on September 2014 as the ruling NCP-Congress alliance split in the state. He was again elected as a Member of Legislative Assembly in Maharashtra in October 2014 and he was elected as the leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in 2019.
Prithviraj Chavan Achievements
Chavan was one of the key people involved in the think-tank for formulating civil nuclear liability by taking up the pain of creating consensus on the controversial issue. He is referred to the media as a technocrat with a clean, low-profile and non-controversial political image. It was in reason to his precedent Ashok Chavan’s ruckus in the political arena that the President of Congress, Sonia Gandhi chose Prithviraj Chavan for the CM’s position considering his clean and non-controversial image. Chavan assumed the title of Chief Minister in Maharashtra, after having held five important portfolios during the UPA regime at the centre. One of the first initiatives he made as the Chief Minister was to coordinate with Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel, in convincing the Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh for obtaining environmental clearance for the second airport in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai International Airport. He served as the Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pensions. He was also General Secretary of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC), while he held the in-charge of states, including Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Haryana, Gujarat, Tripura, and Arunachal Pradesh.
Prithviraj Chavan Personal Life
Chavan married Satvasheela on 16 December 1976 and they have a daughter, Ankita and a son, Jai. His daughter Ankita got married on 29 November 2013 in Delhi.
Other than his professional and political career, Chavan’s interest lies in reading and playing Golf Chess, table tennis and badminton. He is also known as a self-professed cricket fan.
Prithviraj Chavan Images on India Content Website
The India Content website has a good stock of Prithviraj Chavan images. The high-definition images on the website are available in three sizes – small, medium and large.
You can purchase various other content images from the https://www.indiacontent.in
