The stunning victory of the Mahayuti, the alliance of the BJP, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, in the Maharashtra assembly polls has provided answers to many questions. The Mahayuti won 235 of 288 seats, with the BJP bagging 132, and the Sena and the NCP winning 57 and 41 seats, respectively. The Maha Vikas Aghadi, the opposition alliance that includes the Congress, Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT), could win just 50 seats.
For the MVA, it is a massive debacle. Many of its key leaders were defeated, including former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, Balasaheb Thorat and Yashomati Thakur. State Congress president Nana Patole scraped through with a margin of around 200 votes. The Congress was left with just 16 seats, while the Shiv Sena and the NCP(SP) won 20 and 10, respectively.
Politics of populism and freebies, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi once derided as “revdi culture”, seems to have triumphed in Maharashtra. Schemes like Ladki Bahin Yojana (which pays underprivileged women Rs1,500 a month), free electricity to farmers, and apprenticeship allowance to unemployed youth turned out to be key vote-winners. The task before the new government now is to fulfil its promises, prominent among them being the pledge to increase the Ladki Bahin payouts to Rs2,100.
Among the questions that the results have answered are which factions of the Shiv Sena and the NCP hold sway. Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar emerged as dominant leaders, sidelining Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar. Ajit reportedly told nephew Rohit Pawar of the NCP(SP) that Rohit could win Karjat-Jamkhed only because he had chosen not to address a rally there. After winning by just 1,200 votes, Rohit was seen touching Ajit’s feet.
Uddhav, stunned by the scale of the loss, was reportedly left asking, “What kind of anger is this against us?” The situation is such that Maharashtra may not have a leader of the opposition in the assembly. Rules say only an opposition party that has won 10 per cent of the total seats in the assembly could claim the post. None of the parties in the MVA has the required seats (29 of 288). The government could, if it is generous, recognise the MVA as a bloc to grant the position.
Aside from populist schemes and freebies, the Mahayuti’s, and especially the BJP’s, election victory owes a lot to effective campaign management. BJP leaders, with the help of the RSS, addressed more than 250 meetings and rallies even before the election code of conduct came into force.
BJP members say the leadership of Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, affectionately called Deva bhau (elder brother) after the success of Ladki Bahin Yojana, was crucial. Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Fadnavis held district-level meetings to enthuse party cadres to work towards helping the party recover from the humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, in which the Mahayuti could win only 17 of 48 seats.
Fadnavis and state party president Chandrashekhar Bawankule also effectively played the role of mediators whenever seat-sharing talks with allies reached a stalemate. The BJP’s role as a ‘big brother’ in the alliance and its flexibility during negotiations also proved decisive. Its campaign team worked not just for the BJP, but also for the coalition.
The BJP did not have it easy after the Lok Sabha polls results. The party reached out to all sections of society, especially the underprivileged, and held community meetings even before the election code of conduct came into effect. While the Congress banked on the civil society-led movement Nirbhay Bano (Be fearless), the BJP responded by launching the Jagate Raho (Be awake and aware) campaign. It drove home the message that the Congress did well in the Lok Sabha polls only because it spread the false narrative that the BJP would change the Constitution. The BJP took out Samvidhan Samman Yatra to reach out to dalits and tribals, and ensured that the backward communities continued to support it. It wooed Maratha voters by countering the narrative that the party was against granting the community reservation; it pointed out that the Marathas were twice granted reservation when the BJP was in power.
The party also emphasised how, under Fadnavis’s leadership, the Annasaheb Patil Economic Development Corporation created more than one lakh entrepreneurs, mainly from the Maratha community. The BJP also held more than 1,700 programmes to project Ladki Bahin Yojana as ‘Deva bhau’ reaching out to his dear sisters.
The party made efforts to retain support of soybean, cotton and onion farmers. The onion export ban was lifted, and soybean growers were promised a payout of Rs6,000. Before the election code of conduct came into effect, the government also started distributing nearly Rs4,000 crore to cotton and soybean growers.
The BJP also mobilised Hindu votes by highlighting an alleged fatwa issued by Sajjad Nomani of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board to boycott Muslims who supported the saffron party. Campaigns like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s ‘Batenge to katenge’ (Divide, and be destroyed) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Ek Hai Toh Safe Hai’ (United we are safe) helped the party galvanise hindutva sentiment among voters.
Eknath Shinde and his son, Dr Shrikant Shinde, MP, led the Shiv Sena’s campaign from the front. A reason that the Sena swept the Thane, Palghar and Konkan regions was Shrikant’s extensive campaign―he toured 62 constituencies even before the code of conduct came into effect, and held rallies in 41 constituencies highlighting the Shinde government’s work.
A post-results survey said the Mahayuti won because of the wide support it got from women voters and farmers. The survey said Maratha and backward communities voted for Mahayuti this time, unlike in the Lok Sabha polls.
The big question now is who will be Maharashtra’s chief minister. BJP legislators backing Fadnavis cite his crucial role in the victory. Two senior BJP legislators, one of them a former minister, told THE WEEK that there was no alternative to Fadnavis. “Ninety-nine percent, it will be Fadnavis,” said the former minister. The NCP, too, has indicated that it would support Fadnavis for chief minister.
The Shiv Sena, however, maintains that Shinde deserves to be chief minister as he was the one who led the saffron alliance to victory as incumbent CM. A Shinde aide said the party was firmly behind its leader. Asked about the Sena’s position, the BJP legislator said, “Obviously, who would like to give up power? After such a success, anyone would be sad to do so.”
The decision now rests with Modi and Shah. On November 27, Shinde told journalists that he would accept any decision they would take. “There is likely to be a meeting of newly elected legislators on November 29 to elect our legislative party leader, and Fadnavis will be our choice,” said the former minister.
The MVA, meanwhile, is licking its wounds. After the results, there were rumours that Patole had resigned as state Congress president, but the party soon clarified that it was not true.
The Shiv Sena (UBT), which is now the largest opposition party with 20 seats, is exploring all avenues to secure the post of the leader of the opposition. “Twenty legislators are enough to bring the new government to its knees,” said Uddhav at a meeting of newly elected legislators. The Shiv Sena (UBT) has appointed Uddhav’s son Aaditya Thackeray as its legislative party leader and affidavits have been submitted by the MLA-designates that Uddhav will have the power to make final decisions.
The NCP(SP) is upset that 10 of its candidates lost because the Election Commission allotted trumpet as the poll symbol to independent candidates. The NCP(SP)’s symbol is a man blowing tutari, a trumpet-like instrument. After realising that its candidate in Satara Lok Sabha constituency had lost because of the presence of a candidate with the trumpet as his symbol, the party had appealed to the EC to remove it from the list of symbols that could be allotted to independent candidates. Dilip Walse Patil, once a close aide of Sharad Pawar who is now with Ajit, openly admitted that he could win from Ambegaon by around 1,500 votes because of the presence of a candidate with the trumpet as his symbol.
Dismayed by the results, the MVA is likely to launch a campaign against electronic voting machines. Its leaders feel that they lost the polls in such a humiliating manner because of the EVMs. There are reports that the Shiv Sena (UBT) is planning to launch an agitation demanding reinstatement of the ballot paper voting system. The NCP(SP) is in talks with senior lawyers to explore ways to challenge the validity of EVMs in the Supreme Court.
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State BJP president Bawankule alleged that the MVA was insulting the voters by questioning the trustworthiness of EVMs. “We introspected on the Lok Sabha polls defeat, learned from it, and went ahead and won. People have voted for the double-engine government,” he said.
Bawankule said everyone in the BJP wanted Fadnavis to be chief minister. “The leaders of all three parties will sit together and decide [who will be CM],” he said. “A BJP worker never gets upset with the decision taken by the national leadership. The Mahayuti’s chief minister will take oath soon.”
Fadnavis’s emergence as the tallest leader in Maharashtra is a defining outcome of the elections. He has led the BJP to 100-plus seats for the third time; this time, the party won 10 seats more than it did in 2014.
Does Fadnavis’s rise mean that the era of Sharad Pawar, and the politics he represents, is ending?
Only time will tell.