Mumbai: In the run-up to Lok Sabha polls, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis addressed more than a hundred rallies across Maharashtra, the highest for any leader of the state, to campaign for the BJP and its allies. He also exuded confidence that the Mahayuti will comfortably reach the same tally the BJP-led alliance had reached in 2019.
Fadnavis’ belief, however, did not come to pass, leading him to offer his resignation as deputy CM of the Maharashtra government.
On Tuesday, the BJP’s presence plummeted in Maharashtra from 23 MPs in 2019 to just nine now. The larger Mahayuti won 17 seats as compared to the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), which scored 30 of Maharashtra’s 48 Lok Sabha seats.
Speaking to reporters in Mumbai, Fadnavis said, “I accept that somewhere I felt short and I will try to bridge this shortcoming. I, Devendra Fadnavis, am accepting complete responsibility for this setback. I am requesting my party leaders to relieve me from the government and allow me to work full time in the party so that I can give complete time to overcome whatever shortcomings there were this time.”
He, however, added that the BJP did not lose much in terms of absolute vote share. But he accepted that the party scored much lower than its expectations and attributed the dismal performance to errors in working out political arithmetic, consolidation of votes against the BJP due to the Opposition’s narrative about changing the Constitution, anti-incumbency against some candidates, coordination issues with allies at a few places and local agrarian problems.
Among the BJP’s allies within the ruling Mahayuti, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena won seven of the 15 seats it contested, and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) clinched one of the four seats it contested.
Fadnavis has had a dizzying rise within the BJP, from being just a municipal corporator in Nagpur to the undisputed leader of the party in Maharashtra. Since 2019, however, he has had a few setbacks that have shaved his political stock with the party’s central leadership from time to time — being unable to form government in the state despite BJP emerging as the single-largest party in 2019, and the midnight oath-taking with Ajit Pawar the same year for a government that fell in 72 hours.
In 2022 and 2023, Fadnavis repaired some of those dents by enabling the BJP to join hands with factions of the Shiv Sena and NCP after a vertical split in the two parties and running a government with them. This election was the first major test of that arrangement.
In that backdrop, analysts say, Fadnavis’ offer to resign is more about taking charge of the narrative that will unfold around the BJP’s poor performance in Maharashtra and ensuring damage control for himself.
The only saving grace this time is that the BJP’s loss in Maharashtra is not an isolated case. The party’s performance has been poorer-than-expected in some other states too.
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Fadnavis’ damage control
Party sources talk about how for a while, Fadnavis has been the final authority within the BJP right from ticket distribution to seat-sharing talks.
Within the BJP, he has also evolved a working style where he has surrounded himself with a team of his own confidantes, overlooking some of the old guard, a Mumbai-based BJP functionary told ThePrint.
A second BJP leader said, “This time too, the party leadership decided to drop some candidates on his word. It didn’t go down well with everyone. Secondly, under him, the strategy that the BJP adopted was to consciously fight maximum seats against the Congress in Maharashtra thinking it would be easier than fighting regional parties, but that didn’t necessarily work as regional parties in MVA transferred their vote share to the Congress efficiently.”
At his press conference Wednesday, Fadnavis too accepted that he was leading the election for the party. Before any finger pointing can begin, the deputy CM took control of the debate, absolving his colleagues of any responsibility and taking the blame.
“Fadnavis had kept a blooming picture of Maharashtra before the Delhi leadership, but was unable to deliver. The Maratha anger was specifically against him due to the lathi charge incident. The assembly election is just four months away and the combination of Dalits, Marathas and minorities has proved to be potent,” political commentator Abhay Deshpande said.
Fadnavis as state home minister had to last year face the ire of the Maratha community when an agitation led by Maratha quota leader Manoj Jarange Patil saw lathi charge at Antarvali Sarati in Jalna.
“There is a dilemma on whether to go to elections with the same combination and risk a similar result. Even if the party doesn’t accept his resignation as deputy CM, he will get a chip on his shoulder of having been willing to accept responsibility,” Deshpande said.
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BJP’s introspection
The BJP lost in several of Maharashtra’s key regions that it had dominated in 2014 and 2019 such as Mumbai and even Vidarbha, where the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters are located. In Mumbai, the BJP contested three seats and won only one — Mumbai North from where Piyush Goyal contested.
In Vidarbha, which the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept in 2014 and where it had won eight of the ten seats in 2019, the party won only two constituencies. Tall BJP leaders such as Sudhir Mungantiwar, Pankaja Munde, and even Union ministers such as Raosaheb Danve, Bharti Pawar and Kapil Patil were defeated.
Fadnavis, however, said that overall, the Mahayuti was not too far behind the MVA in terms of vote share. The MVA, which comprises the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Congress and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), won 30 seats and got a combined vote share of 43.91 percent, while the Mahayuti got a combined vote share of 42.73 percent.
The deputy CM also said that the Mahayuti’s total votes were only about a few lakh votes lower than the MVA’s. According to Election Commission data, the MVA got 2.5 crore votes, while the Mahayuti got 2.43 crore votes.
In Mumbai, which the Shiv Sena (UBT) swept by winning four of the city’s six seats, Fadnavis claimed that the Mahayuti got 26.67 lakh votes, overshadowing the MVA which got 24.62 lakh votes.
“In the BJP, there are eight seats that we lost by a difference of less than four percent,” Fadnavis said. “Our fight was not just against the MVA, but also against a narrative. One of them was a narrative about changing the Constitution. We were not able to halt the narrative to the extent that we should have,” he added.
However, the former CM said that there were quite a few lessons from this election that the BJP’s state leadership discussed in a meeting Wednesday morning.
“We realised that there were some overall issues, some constituency specific issues, some places where there was anti-incumbency against some candidates that we didn’t realise earlier, at some places farmers’ issues such as onion exports or the prices of soybean and cotton due to disruptions in the international market,” Fadnavis told reporters.
He also named factors such as the narrative around the Maratha quota agitation and the caste polarisation in Marathwada, where the Mahayuti was able to score just one seat, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar that the Shinde-led Shiv Sena won, of the eight constituencies in the region.
“We will also have a meeting with Eknath ji and Ajit dada. There are also some issues of coordination in some constituencies. We will ensure these issues don’t come up again,” Fadnavis said.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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