All eyes on Nagpur, a former 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 had defeated seven time 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 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.

The seat was a bastion of the Congress, which has won it 13 out of 17 times.

"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.