Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Nagpur MP Nitin Gadkari took oath as Union Cabinet Minister at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Sunday. Gadkari won the Lok Sabha elections from the Nagpur constituency, defeating his nearest Congress rival by a margin of 1,37, 603 votes.
He polled 6,55,027 votes against 5,17,424 votes received by Congress' Vikas Thakre in 20 rounds of counting. BSP candidate Yogesh Lanjewar came third with 19,242 votes, while 5,474 votes went to NOTA.
However, Gadkari's winning margin went down by 78,397 in this election. In 2019, he defeated Congress' Nana Patole by 2,16,000 votes. The BJP leader first contested from the constituency in 2014 when he won by 2,84,828 votes.
Nitin Gadkari was born on May 27, 1957 in a Maharashtrian family with roots in agriculture in the orange-city Nagpur. By the mid-seventies, the optimism of the early years of Independence was replaced with disillusionment. Disenchantment was building up among various sections of the society.
The imposition of Emergency in 1975 only precipitated the angst of a betrayed populace. The extent of excesses carried out by the government then shook Gadkari out of his comfort zone. As a student, he aggressively campaigned against the Emergency.
Gadkari got involved very closely with the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and took to social work in a big way. He was particularly inspired by the RSS founder K. B. Hedgewar's ideals of Humanity and nation-building.
Gadkari entered politics as a student leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarathi Parishad (ABVP) and later joined the Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP.
