Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi
The Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi is an Indian political party founded by Prakash Ambedkar on 20 March 2018. The party is primarily based in Maharashtra state.
History and background
On 1 January 2018, the name "Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi" was firstly used in a convention held by Dhangar community people at Pandharpur, Maharashtra. The convention was presided over by Prakash Ambedkar. After this so many organizations of all the communities those were exploited, deprived and the communities being constantly subjected to injustice, became involved in this convention. So far, around 100 small political parties and social organizations have participated in this convention. In June 2018, a decision was taken to constitute a political party, that is the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi by all pro-progressive parties in a meeting in the presence of Prakash Ambedkar, Laxman Mane, Haridas Bhade and Vijay More. "There will be the inclusion of all progressive parties in this front, and this political front will be led by the eminent leader Prakash Ambedkar and existence of each progressive party shall be upheld" In this way, Prakash Ambedkar explained the doctrine of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. Later, on 20 May 2018, Ambedkar established the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. On 15 March 2019, Ambedkar asserted that the Election Commission of India has announced the list of registered parties in India, and "Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi" has been recognized as a registered political party, moreover Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh, a political party shall be dissolved into Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi as said by Prakash Ambedkar. On 28 September 2018, the first session of the VBA was held at Solapur and resulted in agreement from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen to form a coalition. The Coalition Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi is going to contest for the upcoming Lok Sabha and Legislative Assembly elections 2019 in the state Maharashtra. Ambedkar subsequently organised public gatherings throughout Maharashtra under the VBA banner. In the beginning, in order to organize the masses efforts were made by organizing conferences in the name of farmers, workers, youths and reservations and organised various conventions and conventions at district levels were also organised.On 23 February 2019 at Shivaji Park in Mumbai an OBC Reservation Conference was held. This conferences was presided by Rajaram Patil, the leader of Agri-Koli community in the presence of Ambedkar and Owaisi. In this conference, questions of OBC rights were discussed. Furthermore in Mumbai there are 200 villages in Agri, Koli, Bhandari, East Indians tribal for which the government should distribute the property cards, to entitle them with the right to self development, in the same manner the development of slums should be done as per village site law. The people received huge response in the meeting at Shivaji Park, Mumbai. The meetings held by these alliances have received great response so far. Adequate efforts were also made to get Ambedkar along with Indian National Congress-Nationalist Congress Party for the anti-Bhartiya Janata Party agitation. In order to give representation for the deprived communities such as Muslim, Dhangar, Koli, Nomadic tribes OBC and smaller OBC communities, VBA demanded 12 seats to the Indian National Congress. Though Congress was reluctant to share seats and hence Congress didn't take any cognizance of VBA's demands. Therefore, VBA joined AIMIM. As a result of this coalition between VBA and AIMIM, Congress offered 4 seats to the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. "We had proposed 12 seats initially before Congress, but the proposal did not get any positive response. now there is talk of 22 seats, but that has also been revoked," said Prakash Ambedkar. Thereafter VBA took a rigid stand to contest all 48 seats in the state Maharashtra.
In July 2019, Laxman Mane split from the VBA and formed new party, the Maharashtra Bahujan Vanchit Aghadi.
The party had an alliance with the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen until 6 September 2019 when the alliance broke due to differences on seat distribution in the 2019 State Elections in Maharashtra. Prakash Ambedkar is the VBA leader.
The Election Commission of India had given election symbol "Gas cylinder" to the VBA candidates for the 2019 Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election. VBA contested 234 of the 288 seats in 2019 Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election but won none. The VBA also supported 23 other non-VBA candidates. The VBA is the party which contested the second highest number of seats in the election, after the Bahujan Samaj Party. According to the figures released by the Election Commission of India, in the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections held in 2019, VBA candidates had got more than 24 lakh votes. The VBA came the second in 10 constituencies and came third in many more.
On 8 November 2019, the Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangha merged into the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi.
Candidature
In March 2019, VBA declared its first list of 37 candidates along with their caste or religions being mentioned. The candidates of VBA have been selected from different politically deprived communities such as Dhangar, Kunbi, Bhil, Buddhist, Koli, Vadar, Lohar, Varli, Banjara, Muslim, Mali, Kaikadi, Dhivar, Matang, Agri, Shimpi, Lingayat, and Maratha. Ambedkar said the caste of the candidates had been given because no other political party does so and it was essential to highlight that these people were, in his opinion, kept out of politics by competing parties because of issues relating to caste. Out of the 48 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra, AIMIM is contesting in one seat of Aurangabad and the VBA candidate for the remaining 47 seats. The Election Commission of India has given election symbol "Teacup" to most of the VBA candidates for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Prakash Ambedkar, the party leader has been an MP twice from the Akola Loksabha constituency before losing his seat in the 2019 elections.In the Lok Sabha elections 2019, the sole candidate of AIMIM Imtiyaz Jaleel won while no candidate from VBA could win the polls. In the 17 constituencies of the state, the candidates of the VBA got more than 80,000 votes. According to the figures released by the Election Commission of India, in the Lok Sabha elections held in Maharashtra in 2019, VBA and AIMIM candidates had got 4,132,242 votes. 47 candidates standing on the VBA ticket received 37,43,200 votes, it was 6.92% of the total votes in Maharashtra and VBA had 7.08% votes of the 47 constituencies contested. In all the 48 constituencies in Maharashtra, 54,054,245 voters were polled, out of which 1,198,221 voters were polled in the Aurangabad constituency. VBA supported AIMIM was the first place in a Lok Sabha constituency in Aurangabad for getting more votes, whereas VBA was the second in the Akola constituency and VBA was in the third place in 41 constituencies.
Electoral performance
Lok Sabha Elections
| Lok Sabha Term | Indian General Election | Seats contested | Seats won | Votes Polled | % of votes | % of votes in seats contested | State |
| 17th Lok Sabha | 2019 | 47 | 0 | 37,43,200 | 6.92 | 7.08 | Maharashtra |
Vidhan Sabha Elections
Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha
| Vidhan Sabha Term | Maharashtra General Election | Seats contested | Seats won | Votes polled | % of votes | % of votes in seats contested |
| 14th Vidhan Sabha | 2019 | 234 | 0 | 24,00,000+ | 4.6% |