Mumbai: Following the strong performance in the Bihar polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to reward the poll in charge, Vinod Tawde, with a Rajya Sabha nomination from Maharashtra.
Other than Tawde, the BJP has also nominated Union Minister of State Ramdas Athawale, Maya Ivnate from Nagpur, and Ramrao Wadkute from Hingoli.
There are seven Rajya Sabha seats from Maharashtra that will go to polls on 16 March. As per the BJP’s strength in the Maharashtra Assembly, it can get three candidates elected comfortably on its own strength, and possibly a fourth with support from its allies.
“The BJP’s candidate selection is in line with its usual strategy of promoting senior workers from the party’s rank and file, and rewarding its strong performers, while getting caste calculations right,” political analyst Abhay Deshpande told ThePrint.
Ivnate is a tribal leader and a former Nagpur mayor. She has also been a member of the National Commission of Scheduled Tribes.
Wadkute, on the other hand, is from the Dhangar community. A former Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLC, Wadkute joined the BJP in 2019. While he has held organisational posts such as the district head for Hingoli for the BJP’s and the party’s elections in charge for the district, this is the first prime electoral opportunity that the BJP has offered him.
“We have cautiously covered four caste categories – Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Maratha and Dhangar with one woman candidate,” a senior BJP leader said.
Tawde is a Maratha from Konkan, while Athawale, whose Republican Party of India, has been a key ally of the BJP in Maharashtra, represents the Scheduled Caste community.
On Tuesday, the BJP announced nine candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls from other states, including party president Nitin Nabin, who also played a decisive role in the BJP’s Bihar win.
The BJP won 89 of the 243 seats in Bihar, emerging as the single-largest party closely followed by the Janata Dal (United) at 85.
Tawde’s patience and rise
Born in Mumbai’s Marathi heartland of Girangaon, Tawde was groomed by late BJP stalwarts Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde.He had been associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-linked Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) since his college days.
Throughout his over four-decade-long political career, Tawde has worked in various positions for the ABVP and the BJP. Within the ABVP, Tawde rose from karyakarta (worker) to organising secretary of the Mumbai Central Zone, and eventually the All India General Secretary of the outfit.
अनंत आभार एवं धन्यवाद!
पार्टी की केंद्रीय चुनाव समिति द्वारा राज्यसभा हेतु उम्मीदवार घोषित किये जाने पर शीर्ष नेतृत्व का हार्दिक आभार! माननीय प्रधानमंत्री @narendramodi जी के मार्गदर्शन में और राष्ट्रीय अध्यक्ष @NitinNabin जी के नेतृत्व में हम प्रत्येक क्षण राष्ट्र हित के लिए… pic.twitter.com/KrKaff8eeK
— Vinod Tawde (@TawdeVinod) March 4, 2026
In 1995, Tawde took charge as general secretary of the Maharashtra BJP, and in 1999, became the president of the Mumbai unit. He was Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra’s Legislative Council from 2011 to 2014, and then became an MLA from Mumbai’s Borivali constituency and a minister in the Devendra Fadnavis-led state government.
However, Fadnavis’ rise in clout in Maharashtra was inversely proportional to Tawde’s. In the 2019 state poll, Tawde’s name was dropped from the list.
Two years on, when the BJP leadership decided to elevate Tawde to the post of national general secretary, he had only one thing to say, “When I was denied a ticket in the 2019-Assembly polls, I had said that I am a party worker who believes in patience and there was no question of quitting the party for just one denial. The patience has paid today.”
Since then, Tawde’s political trajectory has been on the rise. In his national role, Tawde was the election in charge for five states that went to the polls in 2022 – Goa, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Manipur. The BJP won all, but Punjab.
Now after steering the BJP’s victory in Bihar, Tawde has been tasked with handling the party’s election preparations in Kerala, a state where the party is aggressively looking to make inroads.
The only major controversy that Tawde has found himself embroiled in since his rise in national leadership was in 2024, a day before the Maharashtra assembly poll. Hitendra Thakur of the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi had restrained Tawde inside a Vasai hotel, accusing him of carrying Rs 5 crore in cash to distribute among voters.
This came at a time when his name was being talked about as a possible option for chief ministership in Maharashtra though the polls were being fought evidently under Fadnavis’ leadership.
“Tawde’s nomination is a definite reward for his patience as well as work at the national level. It cements his place in the national scheme of things. It also indicates that he has moved on from state politics and is unlikely to be brought back to Maharashtra,” the BJP leader quoted above said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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