Dandavate entered politics as an
independence activist, participating in the
Quit India Movement in 1942. He was the leader of a
Satyagraha campaign in
Goa in 1955 against Portuguese imperialism. He was one of the prominent opposition leaders during
Indira Gandhi and
Rajiv Gandhi's tenures as
Prime Ministers. After the end of the Emergency and the
1977 elections, Dandavate served as the
Minister of Railways in the
Morarji Desai ministry. He initiated a number of improvements in
the country's rail infrastructure. These included the computerization of railway reservations, which reduced corruption among booking clerks and uncertainty among passengers; sanctioning the first phase of the
Konkan Railway in 1978–79, with a line from
Apta to
Roha; and the repair or replacement of 5000
kilometres of worn-out
tracks. Most notably, he introduced cushioned berths for passengers of second-class sleeper coaches, replacing the existing wooden berths, to provide for a more comfortable journey. While initially implemented in the major trunk lines, all trains had these padded berths in their second-class compartments by the end of the 1980s. As a parliamentarian, one of his major interventions during the enactment of the
Anti-Defection Law in 1985 was the incorporation of a safety clause to allow
dissent. Dandavate later served as the
Finance Minister in
the cabinet of V. P. Singh. His parliamentary career ended after his loss to
Major Sudhir Sawant of the
Congress in
1991, and he slowly receded from national politics. He was also the
Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission in 1990, and again from 1996 to 1998. == Death ==