He was neither a great orator, nor a great mass leader, but because of his quality of making friends across party lines and go-getter attitude, Murli Deora could rule Mumbai for decades and will be remembered as a king-maker who once made South Bombay a Congress bastion.
Deora's closeness to almost all the industrialists in India, Dhirubhai Ambani and the Gandhi family was evident when Sonia, Rahul, Priyanka and Robert Vadra, along with Mukesh and Anil Ambani attended his funeral at Chandanwadi crematorium.
In addition to being president of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee for 22 years, the 4-time Lok Sabha MP and 3-time Rajya Sabha MP was the only petroleum minister who has served for a full five-year tenure that too in two governments of the same prime minister. He was minister between 2006 and 2011 under Dr Manmohan Singh.
A young economics graduate from a family that hailed from Rajasthan, Deora participated in social work and took to politics in 1968 by paying 25 paise as membership fees to be a primary member of the Congress. Deora became a loyalist of the Gandhis, backing Indira. It was the days when Shiv Sena had just been formed and Deora had cordial relations with contemporaries like Manohar Joshi who were powerful in Sena. After winning the first election to become municipal councillor, Deora served BMC between 1968 and '78. He became Mumbai's mayor, that too with Shiv Sena's support, between 1977 and '78 after which he contested Lok Sabha in 1980 but lost to Ratansingh Rajda of Janata Party. In the next elections Deora bounced back to defeat Jayawantiben Mehta of BJP with a margin of more than a lakh votes.
Deora used to organize health camps, the distribution of spectacles was started by him after eye-check up camps. He used to campaign against tobacco and even had moved the apex court against the smoking in public places. He was also director of LIC and served as chairman of the Maharashtra Small Scale Industries Development Corporation.
Deora won Lok Sabha elections from South Mumbai in 1984, 1989, 1991 and 1998. He was elected to Rajya Sabha in 2002, again in 2008 and was serving his third term in the Upper House in Parliament. He was made minister of corporate affairs between January and July 2011. He was close to Rajiv Gandhi and was instrumental in making the late Sunil Dutt union minister for sports and youth affairs in 2004 despite the fact that his rival Gurudas Kamat as Mumbai Pradesh Congress Committee president had won all eight Lok Sabha seats in Mumbai in 2004. It was his closeness to Dhirubhai Ambani that both Mukesh and Anil are close to the Deoras.
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