total expenditure to around 60 percent. In the aftermath of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, R. R. Patil resigned as the Home Minister. After NCP accepted the resignation, Patil was sworn in as Home Minister of Maharashtra in the First Ashok Chavan ministry. For the next one year as the Home Minister of Maharashtra, Patil played a highly crucial role in modernizing the Maharashtra Police, in terms of equipment and training. He established the Force 1, which is an elite counter-terrorism unit of the Mumbai Police with highly upgraded modern weapons. Formed on the lines of the National Security Guards (NSG), its initial training was with the Israeli Special forces and is mainly responsible to guard the Mumbai Metropolitan Area. During this tenure as Home Minister, Patil also passed proposals to install almost 5000 CCTVs in across Mumbai. In 2009, Jayant Patil was sworn in as the Rural Development Minister in the Second Ashok Chavan ministry and continued with the same in the Prithviraj Chavan ministry. His tenure as the Rural Development Minister till 2014 saw some pioneering works including the implementation of E-Panchayats, the improvement of e-banking services in rural Maharashtra and development of sustainable eco-villages. The Eco-Villages Scheme was a grand plan in line to combat climate change and to improve the development and preservation of villages in Maharashtra. The programme involved uplifting the environmental standard of villages and plan their infrastructural development to avoid haphazard constructions. Villages qualified for the scheme received a lump sum fund every year to be used in various development capacities. Jayant Patil toured Maharashtra for the outreach of the scheme and conducted 120 meetings with villagers across Maharashtra. This scheme significantly improved the tax collection from villages across the State and championed the plantation of over 1 crore trees. Present political career In the 2014 Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election, NCP was reduced to just 41 seats, their biggest defeat till date and was in the Opposition benches almost after a decade. Jayant Patil retained his constituency and soon became NCP’s leading speaker in the Assembly, regularly opening debates and keeping a strong tone on the Government. In 2018 he was unanimously elected as the State President of NCP replacing Sunil Tatkare. Patil had the uphill battle of reorganizing and delivering a better result in the 2019 Assembly Elections. Going into the elections, the NCP and INC alliance was not touted to do