Nagpur’s civic map has been redrawn once again, with the 2025 Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) reservation draw overturning long-standing caste and gender alignments. While 76 of 151 total seats remain reserved for women, the latest reshuffle has dealt a major blow to Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) women leaders who had emerged as powerful local voices since 2017.
In the last civic election, 15 seats were reserved for SC (women), giving dalit women a stronghold across north and east Nagpur. But in the new 2025 chart, half of those wards have been rotated to SC (open) or General (women), forcing several sitting corporators out of their constituencies. Among the worst hit are Sneha Nikose (Prabhag 9A, Congress), whose ward is now open, and Shakuntala Parve (Prabhag 20A, BJP), who also loses her SC (women) seat. Veteran corporators like Kanta Rarokar (23A, BJP), Usha Palat (31A), Minakshi Telgote (36A), and Ujwala Bankar (38A) face similar displacements, as their wards shift out of the women’s quota.
The change has fractured traditional dalit clusters in Prabhags 5, 7, and 20, once known as SC-ST belts, now replaced by OBC and General category seats. For the first time in two terms, no single SC (women) cluster remains intact in the city’s northern zone — a major setback for grassroots dalit women leadership.
In contrast, ST (women) seats remain relatively stable, retaining six of the total 12 ST positions. Congress corporator Asha Uikey (8A) and Jyoti Bhisikar (21A) are expected to retain influence, while the conversion of Prabhag 34B to ST (women) has opened new opportunities for emerging tribal leaders from east Nagpur.
Overall, SC representation remains at 30 seats and ST at 12, but the internal balance has shifted sharply. Political observers see this as the end of an era where dalit women leaders enjoyed secure, cluster-based representation. The 2025 elections, they say, will test whether the social and political capital these women built through years of grassroots work can endure beyond the protective boundaries of reservation.
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