Sambhaji Patil, former MLA and Mayor, died here on Friday night. He was 68. He was suffering from a kidney ailment for sometime now.
Dubbed the ‘enfant terrible’ of Belagavi politics, he rose to prominence using linguistic activism, only to reject it later. A long-term leader of the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti, he switched to the Karnataka Congress Party (KCP) and the Congress, before returning to the MES and winning the Belagavi South seat in the 2013 Assembly elections.
Mr. Patil’s four terms as Mayor were marked by the Belagavi city corporation being divided into Kannada, Marathi, and Urdu blocks, and not on the basis of political parties.