Telugu, Hindi-speaking voters, caste & VBA to decide outcome

In the 'City of Black Diamond', the contest for Lok Sabha election is between two MLAs but the fight is more between Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity, local BJP candidate's influence versus sympathy for Congress nominee and her caste factor.

In Chandrapur, the only seat which the Congress won last time, the party fielded Pratibha Dhanorkar, wife of late MP Suresh (Balu) Dhanorkar against BJP's Sudhir Mungantiwar, minister in the Maharashtra government.

Besides 30 coal mines, Chandrapur has several cement factories, the country's largest power station with a capacity of 2,340 MW, and Ballarpur Industries (BILT), India's largest paper manufacturer.


Being an industrial and mining town, the Lok Sabha constituency has around 80,000 Telugu speaking voters, 50,000 Bengali and a large chunk of Hindi voters.

Mungantiwar has replaced former Union minister Hansraj Gangaram Ahir who lost the 2019 Lok Sabha election to Balu Dhanorkar.

Both Mungantiwar and Pratibha Dhanorkar are current MLAs from Warora and Ballarpur, respectively. Mungantiwar is a minister in the BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP alliance government, and has a reputation of ushering development work in this region.

Pratibha Dhanorkar hails from the influential OBC Kunbi community and enjoys influence in the Vani - Arni assembly segments of Chandrapur. Both candidates have their set of challenges - Mungantiwar caste factors and coal mine workers where Ahir enjoys influence.

Whereas for Pratibha, the main challenge is within her party as senior Congress leader from the region Vijay Wadettiwar, wanted his daughter Shivani Wadettiwar to be fielded from here.

In the Warora assembly segment, Gourav, a college-going student waiting at the bus stand, says the contest is "50-50 this time. Pratibha tai hails from our caste but Mungantiwar is also a big leader."

Standing next to him, Rajesh Shinde, a school-teacher says, "Due to big industries in Chandrapur, there is a large Hindi speaking and Telugu speaking population and their votes could be a deciding factor."

Late in the evening after returning from office - Pratyush and Shrikant - enjoying Panipuri at Nagpur-Chandrapur road discussing the election, say,"Mungantiwar has done development in the assembly constituency but Pratibha enjoys influence in rural villages."

Local Congress leaders point to the fact that several groups of Teli community, another influential OBC grouping, have announced their support to Pratibha. And, the VBA has fielded a candidate who doesn't hail from the SC community that would eventually help them.

Meanwhile, Mungantiwar is running a high-octane campaign from film stars Sunil Shetty to several Marathi film industry actors who have campaigned for him. Several top leaders of Maharashtra, including NCP's Chhagan Bhujbal camped here for him.