Explained: Behind BJP's hesitance in seat-sharing in Maharashtra's Vidarbha

BJP, aiming for deeper inroads in Vidarbha, is looking to contest constituencies previously held by Sena.

Going by the multiple rounds of negotiation between the Bharatiya Janta Party and its alliance partners- Shiv Sena (Shinde) and NCP (Ajit Pawar) in Maharashtra, the BJP seems to be in no mood to part with any of the ten Lok Sabha seats that constitute the Vidarbha region.

The cotton belt is crucial as it makes up a sizeable chunk in Maharashtra’s overall tally of 48 seats- the second highest after UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. BJP has made considerable inroads into Vidarbha- a region traditionally considered a Congress stronghold.

The BJP’s insistence on Vidarbha arises from its robust organizational presence and leadership in the area, providing it an advantage over its alliance partners, Sena (Shinde faction) and NCP (Ajit Pawar faction).

BJP’s strong leadership in Vidarbha, including figures like Nitin Gadkari, Devendra Fadnavis, and Chandrashekhar Bawankule. The BJP leadership  has maintained that decisions on constituencies will be based on organisational strength and the candidate’s winnability factor.

BJP, aiming for deeper inroads in Vidarbha, is looking to contest constituencies previously held by Sena.

The party also believes given its growing organizational base, it is better suited to take on the Congress than its allies, thereby prompting a strategic approach in this traditional Congress bastion.

In 2014, capitalising on the Modi wave the BJP-Shiv Sena combine swept the Lok Sabha polls winning 41 out of 48 seats, and winning all the 10 seats in Vidarbha region.

In the 2014 Assembly elections, Vidarbha played an important role in making the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the single-largest party, with 44 of the total seats 62 seats from the region.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP and the undivided Sena contested together in Maharashtra, securing 23 and 18 seats, respectively.

In Vidarbha, BJP won five seats — Nagpur, Akola, Wardha, Bhandara-Gondia, Gadchiroli — with 57,65,690 votes. The region’s political dynamics shifted due to the splits in Sena and NCP between 2021 and 2023.

Vidarbha was always considered a Congress bastion, whereas Nagpur being the headquarters of RSS was considered a safe bet for BJP. However, the Congress-NCP alliance  was decimated in the 2004 parliamentary polls in Vidarbha with the BJP-Shiv Sena combine winning 10 seats.

Comprising 11 districts of Nagpur and Amaravati divisions, Vidarbha has over 20 percent of the state’s population and is the land of perennial agrarian crisis and farmers’ suicides. Barring Nagpur and Chandrapur, where the development work is concentrated, the rest of the districts are agrarian and complain of disparity in development.

Vidarbha is considered a growth area for the BJP, with many of its senior leaders such as Nitin Gadkari, Sudhir Mungantiwar and Devendra Fadnavis hailing from the region. The BJP’s consolidation in Vidarbha is attributed to its strong performance at the grass-roots level, where it has consistently won local body elections (zilla parishads, gram panchayats and municipal corporations and councils) over the last two decades.

In spite of being well endowed with mineral and forest wealth, Vidarbha remains one of the most  backward regions of the state. This is despite the fact that four chief ministers – Vasantrao Naik, Marotrao Kannamwar, Sudhakarrao Naik and incumbent CM Fadnavis – were from Vidarbha. Known for cotton production, the region has been in the news for farmer suicides, Maoist insurgency and drought.

Despite being a Marathi-speaking region, Vidarbha has always had a distinct cultural identity.

One reason why there is no popular agitation for Vidarbha state is that the political leadership of the region has lost credibility with the people. They have become wary of the cynical ways in which politicians from the Congress and the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), the two dominant political forces in the region, tried to exploit the issue for decades to keep themselves politically relevant.