Nagpur: The last time the word ‘Vidarbha’ carried the weight of a capital, Nagpur was at the centre of a vast region’s political identity — as capital of the Central Provinces & Berar. That was before 1960, before the formation of Maharashtra, before a set of promises — referred to as the Akola and Nagpur Pacts — were made to the people of this region in exchange for their consent to join the new state. Over six decades later, a group of men who have spent years demanding that those promises be honoured say they are now ready with ‘Mission 2027′ — a mission they claim will decide the direction of the ‘struggle’ for a separate state of Vidarbha.The group belongs to the Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti (VRAS), one of the most persistent voices in a movement that refuses to fade. Their case, distilled to its core: Vidarbha was rich, Vidarbha was promised, and Vidarbha was shortchanged from Day 1. But sitting across the table, what was striking was not the weight of old grievances but the clarity of a movement that believes its moment is approaching.Mission 2027, as VRAS calls it, is being constructed village by village, campus by campus. In an exclusive conversation with TOI, the group informed that in two years, the organisation has held awareness camps across 120 towns and visited 152 colleges to make the case for statehood to a generation that was not born when the movement’s foundational battles were being fought.Former MLA Wamanrao Chatap, who leads VRAS, said, “By 2027, our movement will take a very crucial turn and everything we are doing now is building up to that point.”“It is like lighting a candle one-by-one and spreading enlightenment. We are aggressively creating awareness about the need for statehood. Youth are being sensitised towards the need for a separate state as that alone can ensure their future,” Chatap said.Students, he added, are a constituency VRAS has not yet fully mobilised — and that is about to change. The organisation’s teams are still reaching villages they have not covered. The work, Chatap said, is far from done but the momentum, he believes, is building in their favour.The grievance that Mission 2027 draws from goes back to 1956. Chatap pointed out that the delay in formation of the Vidarbha Statutory Development Board, which should have been done at the time of Maharashtra’s formation, proved fatal for Vidarbha’s development. Had it been done then, he argued, Vidarbha’s developmental trajectory would have looked very different. “Violation of Nagpur Pact since day one,” he said flatly. He also pushed back against the framing that Vidarbha had sought merger with Maharashtra. “We didn’t approach them, they came to us for merger,” Chatap said. The distinction matters to VRAS because it shapes how the original negotiation and its subsequent betrayal are understood.Arun Kedar, another VRAS leader noted that projects like Koyna and Krishna Valley command their own separate departments, budgets and ministers within Maharashtra’s administrative structure. Vidarbha, despite being the state’s largest region by area and among its most resource-rich, has no equivalent institutional protection. “Nagpur was already the capital of a massive state when talks of Maharashtra started. We gave up our status, our economic prosperity, all for tall promises made by the politicians of that time. And these promises turned out to be hollow and now Vidarbha is looking at a bleaker future if it stays under Maharashtra,” said Kedar.On the political class, senior VRAS leader Tatya Mate was unsparing. “Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, both the NCP factions — none of them have any genuine stake in Vidarbha statehood,” said Mate, adding, even BJP leaders who once publicly championed the cause have quietly set it aside.Shreenivas Khandewale, a veteran VRAS leader who is now 90 years old but still active, said, “Only when BJP sees political threat will it revert to Vidarbha statehood demand. The upcoming delimitation exercise will carry significant consequences for Vidarbha’s political representation — a dimension of the statehood debate that which will work in Vidarbha’s favour.”Khandewale also countered the argument that infrastructure development like roads, metro rail and industrial corridors in Vidarbha has accelerated to a point where the case for a separate state is no longer pressing. “Going by the same logic, British built massive infrastructure in India such as railways, roads, so then why did we demand independence? The need for self-governance on our terms is the key issue here because being under Maharashtra means that all the funds go towards the western part of the state while we remain deprived,” he said.The character of the movement has fundamentally shifted, making it stronger, Khandewale stressed. For the first two generations of activists, the agitation was driven by emotion, pride, a sense of cultural and regional identity. Now, it is economic, making it harder to dismiss, he said. Covid-19 accelerated that shift in a way that no political campaign could have. Job losses mounted across the region, companies shut down, and the gap between Vidarbha’s resource wealth and its people’s lived reality became impossible to paper over.VRAS leader Mukesh Masurkar said, “Butibori on the outskirts of Nagpur, known as Asia’s largest industrial estate, is a symbol of that contradiction. The infrastructure is there. The employment is not. Unless governance changes, it will get worse. The power bills are high and our youths are leaving for Mumbai and Pune for want of opportunity. This will all stop if Vidarbha state is created.”The power irony is one that Chatap returned to more than once. “Power is produced here and Mumbai is lit up 24/7, while many areas in our Vidarbha face load shedding. The forest reserves are here along with minerals, so we are being used as a resource-cum-warehouse from where the materials are taken ahead to be turned into higher-value products,” he said.VRAS noted that Vidarbha continues to record the highest number of farmer suicides in Vidarbha, a statistic they link directly to decades of administrative neglect.As VRAS counts down to its Mission 2027, they acknowledge that two generations of activists have already dedicated themselves to this cause on the strength of emotion and identity. Khandewale said, “The third generation will carry it forward on the strength of economics, organisation, and young people who are just beginning to ask the questions VRAS has been raising for decades.”
