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Journalism of Courage
On September 29, 2010, the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi chose Nandurbar district in Maharashtra to launch the Central government’s Aadhaar card scheme. Since then, it took 14 years for a member of Gandhi family to visit the district, when Rahul Gandhi during his second leg of Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, entered Maharashtra from Gujarat through Nandurbar in March 2024.
After the absence of Gandhi family in the poll campaign from Nandurbar–historically known as one of the strongholds of the Congress party–for two successive general elections, party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi will finally be campaigning here on May 11. Her campaign rally has been finalised after lot of deliberations over the date and the venue. It was even postponed once since Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also scheduled his rally in Nandurbar on May 10.
Nandurbar on Maharashtra-Gujarat border with a large Scheduled Tribe population was the only Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra which the Congress never lost since independence. Nandurbar was one of the few seats in Maharashtra which the Congress led by Indira Gandhi won in 1977 elections, post-Emergency. Late Manikarao Gavit won from this seat for nine terms, including the 1981 by-election. Late Indira Gandhi used to kick-start her poll campaign from here in every election. Nandurbar was also the place where Sonia Gandhi held her first public rally after her decision to actively enter politics.
In 2014, Gavit lost to Bharatiya Janata Party’s Dr Heena Gavit by a margin of over one lakh votes. The BJP retained the seat in 2019. This time the battle is between her and Congress’ Adv Gowaal Padvi, son of former Minister for Tribal Development and seven-term MLA K C Padvi.
Despite the close association with Gandhi family in the past, the party is unable to reclaim its past glory in the region. Prior to 2019 polls, the then party candidate K C Padvi had written to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to revive the old party tradition of launching the campaign from Nandurbar. The move, however, did not gain any success.
In March 2024, Rahul Gandhi spent two days in Nandurbar. He participated in the traditional tribal Holi bonfire and also addressed Aadivasi Nyay Sabha (Tribal Justice rally) at Nandurbar. In a LS seat where all six assembly constituencies are reserved for Scheduled Tribes, Gandhi had then attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly depriving tribals of their ‘ownership rights’ on ‘jal-jameen-jungle.’
“The Adanis-Ambanis are among the 22 multi-millionaires who are taking over your wealth… You are Aadivasis, the original malik, but BJP wants to make you Vanvasis who live in the forest. The BJP wants to destroy the jungles and hand them over to the capitalists,” he had said.
As the party hopes to win this seat after two successive defeats, Priyanka Gandhi is set to visit here to launch yet another attack on the BJP and PM Narendra Modi. “We want to have the maximum impact of her speech in the region and that’s why we have planned it on the last day of campaigning as we go to vote on May 13,” said a senior Congress leader from Nandurbar, denying the date was changed due to PM Modi’s rally.
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