The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered a major setback ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections. Senior Vidarbha leader Gopaldas S. Aggarwal on Friday left the BJP party and returned to the Congress. Aggarwal was elected MLA from Gondia seat in 2004, 2009 and 2014 on a Congress ticket. He joined the BJP just before the 2019 assembly elections. However, after joining the BJP, he lost the election to independent candidate Vinod S. Aggarwal.
Gondia seat falls in the tribal area of Maharashtra, which has been a traditional stronghold of the Congress. Since 1952, the Congress has won this seat 12 times, except in 1995, 1999 and 2019. Recently, 73-year-old Gopaldas Aggarwal submitted his resignation to BJP national president J.P. Nadda. Political analysts are calling it a big setback for the saffron party.
The BJP had already won only 1 out of 10 seats in Vidarbha in the May 2024 elections. Only Union Minister Nitin Gadkari managed to win his Nagpur seat. Gopaldas Aggarwal was welcomed into the Congress in the presence of AICC general secretary Ramesh Chennithala, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress president Nana Patole, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Vijay Wadettiwar, former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, former ministers Nitin Raut, Sunil Kedar, Shivajirao Moghe, MPs and MLAs.
Ramesh Chennithala said, “We heartily welcome Gopaldas Aggarwal to the Congress… People of Vidarbha have always supported us and we are confident that they will support us in the upcoming assembly elections as well.” Nana Patole criticised the policies of the BJP government and said that in Gondia, which is known as the ‘rice city’, the rice mill business has been ruined due to the wrong policies of the BJP government.
Vijay Wadettiwar expressed confidence that Vidarbha has always been a Congress bastion and the party will defeat the BJP in the upcoming Assembly elections and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) flag will once again fly at the state headquarters in Mumbai. Former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan accused the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance of being the most corrupt government the state has ever seen, even in the construction of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue that collapsed in Sindhudurg recently. Congress leaders accused the BJP of running a false campaign against Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and warned that the people will teach the BJP a lesson.
