Pune: Reminiscing his college days including visiting the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economy campus to study peacefully, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar said that he had many friends along with Shrinivas Patil who was residing in the hostel here.
“I was a student of neighbouring educational institute i.e. Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce and had taken up the hostel facility at Ferguson College, but we friends used to come here often,” he said.
He was speaking during the inauguration of Gokhale Sanchit building at GIPE here on Wednesday where he was invited as the chief guest. “I remember that economist, late VM Dandekar had prepared a report of drought when Maharashtra was reeling under severe drought and I was the Chief Minister of the State. I had accepted his report to work on the rehabilitation of people,” Pawar said.
Pawar said, “Gopal Krishna Gokhale advocated social reforms, unlike Lokmanya Tilak who was forceful about getting independence first. Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society and was a moderate Congress leader. He was a visionary and had expressed his thoughts over industrialisation and scientific development of the Indian society. He also worked for the empowerment of women and Dalit community,” said Pawar.
Secretary of the Society Milind Deshmukh said, “Social reformer Gopal Krishna Gokhale had kept a fixed deposit of a certain amount. In last 115 years, the amount has increased to Rs 25 crore and we built the building by spending Rs 7 crore.”
The three-storey building will have a legal counselling centre beside a pre-primary school and a computer training centre which will come up in collaboration with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). In addition, the new building will also cater to conducting sports activities for these school students. Both these courses will begin from this academic year starting from June, said Deshmukh.
Gokhale Institute’s Director Rajas Parchure proposed the vote of thanks.
