Vidarbha braces for Cong-BJP showdown

In Vidarbha, Congress and BJP clash for 36 of 62 assembly seats, with both parties seeking to sway voters ahead of the November 20 polls.

Strap: Of the 62 seats here, the two parties will clash in 36, in a stronghold the Congress is hoping to win back from its arch rival

Vidarbha braces for Cong-BJP showdown

NAGPUR: The road to the corridors of power in Mumbai passes through Vidarbha, where two diametrically opposite ideologies are battling for control of the region. Vidarbha accounts for 62 of the 288 seats in the state assembly, and the two major parties in the fray – the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – will go up against each other in 36 constituencies.

As the state enters the last lap before the November 20 polls, both the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), of which the Congress is a part, and the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance, are going all-out to reel in voters. The BJP’s agenda is clear – following its near-decimation in the recent Lok Sabha elections, in its stronghold of Vidarbha, the party is banking on the right political messaging to paper over its losses. It is also hoping that the populist schemes it recently launched will help it cross the finish line.

For its part, the Congress is hoping that its Lok Sabha triumph in its former stronghold will help carry it through, and that the five promises in the MVA’s election manifesto will convince a region in agrarian distress that it will change its fortunes if voted to power.

Political Heavyweights In Fray

Some of the BJP’s political front runners are contesting from Vidarbha, among them deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis himself. While Fadnavis is contesting from Nagpur South-West, BJP state president Chandrashekhar Bawankule is contesting from Kamptee, Sudhir Mungantiwar from Ballarshah and Madan Yerawar from Yavatmal.

From the MVA camp, state Congress president Nana Patole and leader of the Opposition, Vijay Wadettiwar, are in the fray from Sakoli and Bramhapuri, respectively.

The Congress’s case

The Congress’s determination to recapture Vidarbha is apparent from in its decision to allot two important posts, state president and Opposition leader, to Patole and Wadettiwar. It was also here that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi got the most traction during his Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2022 – the party won five of the 10 seats in the region in the recent Lok Sabha elections.

However, despite the Congress’s stellar performance in the recent Lok Sabha elections, it was able to wrest no more than 40 seats in Vidarbha in the MVA’s seat-sharing equation for the assembly elections.

Still, the party is gung-ho about its chances. Bhupesh Baghel, the Congress’s election in-charge in the region, said, “We will win at least 30 seats in the region, as people are fed up with rising inflation, unemployment, and farmers are frustrated with the lack of viable prices for agriculture produce.”

He believes the MVA’s five guarantees will turn the vote in favour of the Congress. The people will see through the Mahayuti’s populist schemes, such as the Ladki Bahin Yojana, which have been launched solely with an eye on the elections, he said.

The BJP’s case

The BJP, on the other hand, claims there is a “positive wave” in favour of Mahayuti across Vidarbha. BJP state president Chandrashekhar Bawankule, said the party would march through the region by matching the 44 seats it had won in 2014, during the Modi sweep.

“We are receiving a tremendous response in the tribal district of Gadchiroli, where our government has provided around 15,000 jobs in the last few years, in iron mining and steel plants alone. We will win all the seats from the tribal district this time,” said Bawankule.

Vinod Deshmukh, a political analyst, says remunerative prices of raw cotton and soyabean are major issues here. Vidarbha has been in the throes of an agrarian crisis, and rural voters play a decisive role in the outcome of elections. The caste factor too may swing the fortunes of these parties. The Kunbi, an influential community in Vidarbha, went against the BJP in the last elections.

However, the BJP’s organising secretary for Vidarbha, Upendra Kothekar, says a lot has changed lately. The Mahayuti alliance launched many welfare schemes for OBCs and, Kothekar claimed, the OBCs, particularly the Kunbi community, which had drifted away, are now supporting the BJP.