All eyes on Nagpur, ex-Cong bastion, due to ‘development man’ Gadkari
The battle for Nagpur Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra is among the most watched in the country due to the presence of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, a hardcore RSS loyalist who has a legion of admirers for his development work as well as the penchant for talking straight.
In 2014, he defeated seventime MP Vilas Muttemwar by a margin of 2.84 lakh votes and retained the seat in 2019 by defeating current Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole by 2.16 lakh votes.
Nagpur, with 22,18,259 voters comprising 11,10,840 males, 11,07,197 females, and 222 third-gender persons, is Vidarbha’s largest city and has a connection to the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological mentor of the BJP, as well as Ambedkarism on the other end of the spectrum, since the legendary social reformer converted to Buddhism here.
“Gadkari is part of the RSS ecosystem and is very close to the organisation. He is widely seen as an alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the BJP. These two aspects make Nagpur a very important seat,” senior journalist and political analyst Vivek Deshpande told the news agency.
Gadkari won in 2014 due to the Modi wave and in 2019 for his reputation as a taskmaster who set several infrastructure projects rolling in Nagpur as well as the country, he said.
His ability to talk straight has given him a reputation as the only challenger to Modi, Deshpande claimed. “Factors like Pulwama which helped BJP in 2019 are missing. Its induction of allegedly tainted leaders has seen BJP getting attacked with washing machine jibes. The opposition, unlike last time, is united. The reputation of Rahul Gandhi as a serious politician has improved after his Bharat Jodo and Nyay Yatras,” Deshpande said.