NANAJI DESHMUKH

Oct. 12, 2020

The Vice President of India paid rich tributes to the great social worker and visionary leader Nanaji Deshmukh on his birth anniversary.

About:

Chandikadas Amritrao Deshmukh, affectionately called Nanaji Deshmukh (1916 – 2010) was a social activist and political leader.
Political Career:
- Nanaji Deshmukh was a long-time RSS member and a founding member of the Jan Sangh. He later became a part of the Janata Party and Bharatiya Janata Party.
- He was considered one of the architects of the Jai Prakash Narain movement against Emergency in 1974, and was also instrumental in the formation of Janata Party government in 1977.
- He was a member of the sixth Lok Sabha between 1977 and 1979, and nominated to Rajya Sabha by the then NDA government in 1999.
Social work:
- As a social activist, he worked in the fields of education, health, and rural self-reliance esp. in around 500 villages in Chitrakoot.
- He set up the Chitrakoot Gramodaya Vishwavidyalaya in Madhya Pradesh, which is considered the country's first rural university.
- He started a chain of Saraswati Vidya Mandir schools throughout India.
He was honoured with the Padma Vibhushan in 1999 and was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna in 2019.