Manikrao Govindrao Thakare (born 22 August 1954) is an Indian politician from the state of

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...

. He is a senior leader of

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Em ...

& He is the most trustworthy OBC leader in

. He was previously a member of the

Maharashtra Legislative Assembly The Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha or the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly is the lower house of the legislature of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is situated in the Nariman Point area of South Mumbai in the capital Mumbai. Presently, 288 memb ...

from the

from 1985 until 2004 from

Darwha (Vidhan Sabha constituency) Darwha Vidhan Sabha seat was one of the constituencies of Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha, in India. Darwha seat existed from 1972 until the 2004 elections. Darwha is in Yavatmal district. It is a segment of the Yavatmal-Washim (Lok Sabha constituenc ...

Constituency. He was later given the Energy Ministry portfolio during Jan 2003 - 2004 and in July 2004, he was one of 22 ministers to be dropped as minister by the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra Sushilkumar Shinde. Manikrao has been a vocal critic of the

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi ...

Shiv Sena Shiv Sena ( IAST: ''Śiva Sēnā'') () was a right-wing to far-right Marathi regionalist and Hindu ultranationalist political party in India founded in 1966 by cartoonist Bal Thackeray. Originally emerging from nativist movements in Bom ...

alliance government which ruled Maharashtra up to 1999, especially its handling of the Srikrishna Commission. On July 27, 1998, Manikrao along with

R R Patil Raosaheb Ramrao Patil, better known as R. R. Patil (16 August 1957 – 16 February 2015) was an Indian politician from the state of Maharashtra. He was an MLA for Tasgaon vidhan sabha constituency from 1991 to 2015. He was an important lea ...

demanded that the Justice Shrikrishna Commission report be tabled on the floor of the assembly. This forced an adjournment of the assembly. His relentless criticism of the then government in the legislature ensured that when the government lost its mandate. Manikrao Thakare was appointed as AICC incharge of Telangana affairs on 4 January 2023.

References

Marathi politicians 1954 births Members of the Maharashtra Legislative Council Living people Maharashtra MLAs 1985–1990 Maharashtra MLAs 1990–1995 Maharashtra MLAs 1995–1999 Maharashtra MLAs 1999–2004 Indian National Congress politicians from Maharashtra {{Maharashtra-INC-politician-stub