Why push for a new Vidarbha state out of Maharashtra is a non-starter

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To begin with, creation of a new state would require a two-thirds majority in both the Legislative Assembly and the Council. The BJP has only 122 members in the 288-seat Assembly; the remaining 166 are vociferously against the division of Maharashtra. In this group are 63 MLAs of the Shiv Sena, BJP’s partner in government, the Congress’s 41, NCP’s 40, the lone MNS MLA, as well as the 21 Others.

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Sena founder Bal Thackeray was against statehood for Vidarbha, having declared that “the creation of Maharashtra with Mumbai as capital was possible because of the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement in which 105 martyrs laid down their lives”, and that the memory of these martyrs could not be insulted by creating a separate Vidarbha state. Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray subscribes to his father’s united Maharashtra idea.

Unless the numbers in the Maharashtra legislature change — which cannot happen, at the earliest, before 2019 — there is no way the BJP can move forward in this situation. “Emotions cannot eclipse political realities. We have to get the arithmetic right before trying to build chemistry in favour of statehood,” says a top BJP leader.

It is not surprising then that the BJP has decided to keep the issue on the back burner, and the RSS has passed the ball on to the BJP’s court.

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The case for statehood is built on Vidarbha’s backwardness — the lack of socio-economic development resulting from six decades of political neglect. The Nagpur Pact, which promised equitable development of the region along with the rest of the state, and a six-week annual winter session of the Assembly in Nagpur, did not result in any real benefits to the region. Statehood for Vidarbha has always remained a political issue that peaks ahead of elections, while the people continue to complain of injustice from dominant western Maharashtra politicians.

Those in favour of a separate Vidarbha have been pointing out that Babasaheb Ambedkar believed that a large state of Maharashtra comprising separate regions with their own cultures and socio-economic problems would be difficult to govern — and had, therefore, proposed four small states of Western Maharashtra, Central Maharashtra, Eastern Maharashtra and Bombay City State. The proposed Eastern Maharashtra had 11 districts that are now part of Vidarbha.

While Ambedkar’s writings are from the period 1952-56, in 1953 — seven years before the creation of Maharashtra — Madhav Shrihari Aney had put before the States Reorganisation Commission the demand for a separate Vidarbha with Nagpur as capital.

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Given the currrent political situation, Chief Minister Fadnavis has been aggresively pushing the development plank in Vidarbha. Fadnavis, who himself hails from Nagpur, has rolled out some two dozen mega projects in all the core growth areas — manufacturing, defence, agro-industries, textiles, infrastructure, etc. At the February 13-18 Make In India Week, Vidarbha and Marathwada got 20% of the total investments worth Rs 8 lakh crore. Planned investments in Vidarbha add up to over Rs 60,000 crore.

Even within Vidarbha, Fadnavis is working to ensure equitable growth. Thus, an international textile hub is planned at Amravati, communication towers are to be erected in 350 villages in LWE-affected Gadchiroli and Chandrapur, and an aviation and electronics hub is to come up in Nagpur.

The current focus on the economy is in the context of emotive politics being hemmed in by political realties. The statehood issue may be brought in again ahead of Assembly elections in 2019.