Mumbai: In 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had registered a thundering victory in the Lok Sabha elections, sweeping Maharashtra, among other states. The party was very optimistic ahead of the state assembly polls that were scheduled for October that year. The then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis was assertively driving a “Me punha yein” (I will be back) campaign, and many state party leaders were certain about crossing the halfway mark of 144 on their own strength.
Five years later, there is another state election coming up, but the mood is drastically different. The BJP is jittery, and none of the three ruling parties — the BJP, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) — can confidently claim “me punha yein”.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) Friday announced the assembly election schedule for Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, but stayed silent on Maharashtra, a departure from what has been the pattern for the past three elections. In 2009, 2014 and 2019, Maharashtra and Haryana had voted on the same day.
This time, the Haryana assembly polls will be held on 1 October, 2024. The current Maharashtra government’s term will end on 26 November, and that of the Haryana assembly will expire on 3 November.
There are several factors that are keeping Maharashtra’s ruling alliance on edge. These include political decisions that have backfired, the Mahayuti’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha poll this year, the local issues that led to the ruling alliance’s loss in several key seats have not gone away yet, Dalit and minority votes going to the Opposition parties in the Lok Sabha poll, challenges in deciding on a seat-sharing formula, and muscle-flexing by the BJP’s allies looking to increase their bargaining power.
On record, however, the BJP maintains that it is confident about a victory.
“We have learnt from our mistakes in the Lok Sabha polls. We are confident that the party will be the largest in Maharashtra after the polls and the Mahayuti will form the government. The Maharashtra elections are being announced late because last time, the assembly was formed late. There is no other reason,” Keshav Upadhye, Maharashtra BJP spokesperson, told ThePrint.
Also read: Unique numbers to 3D mapping, Dharavi survey picks up steam, but project’s fate hangs in balance
Political strategies that backfired
In 2019, the BJP and the undivided Shiv Sena won a comfortable majority as an alliance and were poised to form the government. Tussles over power-sharing, especially the chief ministerial post, splintered the alliance because the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena walked away as a proud BJP refused to relent.
The Thackeray-led Shiv Sena eventually formed the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government with political rivals Congress and the undivided NCP.
“The BJP’s traditional alliance with the Shiv Sena snipped because of its political ambitions and the party doesn’t seem to have fully recovered since then. After the MVA government was formed, instead of biding its time and strengthening its ground base and organisational cadre, the BJP resorted to shortcuts and was instrumental in splitting up two regional parties. These decisions have turned out to be strategically wrong,” Dr Sanjay Patil, a researcher at Mumbai University’s politics and civics department, told ThePrint.
Speaking to ThePrint before the Lok Sabha Election, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had clarified that the Shiv Sena and the NCP split in 2022 and 2023, respectively, because of their internal issues. He said the BJP did not engineer their split, but took political advantage of it.
“In 2019, the BJP was at the centre stage of Maharashtra politics, but much has changed now. That space is divided even within the Mahayuti alliance. In 2019, the question was: can the BJP win alone? Now the question is: can the BJP win despite having two regional parties with it?” said Patil.
Unfavourable Lok Sabha results
The BJP won just nine of the 28 seats it contested in the Lok Sabha poll in Maharashtra this time, down from its tally of 23 last time. Its allies — the Shinde Sena and the Ajit Pawar’s NCP — won seven and one seat, respectively, bringing the Mahayuti’s tally to 17.
The rival MVA, on the other hand, won 30 seats, while one went to an Independent — a Congress rebel — who eventually offered his support to the MVA.
After the results, Fadnavis took a review and maintained that the Mahayuti alliance was not far behind the MVA in terms of vote share, with the Mahayuti getting a combined vote share of 42.73 percent and the MVA getting a combined vote share of 43.91 percent. The Mahayuti, however, got its political arithmetic wrong, he said.
BJP leaders have time and again said that the MVA allies were able to transfer their votes to each other better than the Mahayuti allies. Some leaders also complain about how while the BJP efficiently transferred its votes to the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, the reverse did not necessarily happen.
The MVA parties are confident about continuing their momentum in the assembly polls as many of the factors due to which they emerged stronger than the Mahayuti in the Lok Sabha elections still prevail.
Local factors
The Scheduled Castes (SCs) and minorities overwhelmingly voted for Opposition parties but beyond that, the parliamentary election in Maharashtra was dominated by several regional factors, many of which are still dominant. For instance, the angst of the Maratha community against the ruling dispensation was responsible for the Mahayuti losing all but one parliamentary seat in Marathwada.
In 2019, the alliance of the BJP and undivided Shiv Sena had swept the region, with the BJP winning four of the eight seats, the Sena getting three, and one going to the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).
The Maratha community under the leadership of Jalna-based Manoj Jarange Patil has been demanding that the state government notify all Marathas as Kunbis and grant them reservation as Other Backward Classes. While the state government has started the process of looking at documents and handing out Kunbi certificates to eligible Marathas, Jarange Patil wants these benefits to be extended to the ‘sage soyare’ (relations by birth or marriage) of Marathas identified as Kunbi so far. With the OBCs opposed to this demand, and the OBCs being a significant vote bank of the BJP in Maharashtra, the ruling dispensation has to walk a tightrope.
The other local factor that affected the Mahayuti’s performance in the Lok Sabha poll in different pockets of Maharashtra was distress among farmers, especially those growing onion, soybean and cotton.
Onion-growing belts strongly rejected the ruling Mahayuti due to the ban on onion exports, which caused prices to crash. The ban was taken back in May 2024, but farmers are yet to fully recover from its effects. Second deputy chief minister Pawar last week started his Jan Sanman Yatra with an apology to onion farmers.
The third local factor that the MVA continues to play up is the development of Gujarat, which has been attracting large industrial projects allegedly at the cost of Maharashtra’s growth.
“Historically, the domination of Delhi and the domination of Gujarat over Maharashtra have been sore points for the people of the state. Now, the Opposition has built its campaign on this, alleging that the Delhi leadership of the BJP is taking all decisions for Mahayuti, and that the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine is being partial to their home state, Gujarat. The BJP has not been able to counter this effectively,” Dr Patil said.
Alliance troubles
While BJP leaders have been lamenting that the vote share of allies did not efficiently transfer to them, they also like to talk about how the alliance with the Ajit Pawar-led NCP does not seem to be serving them well.
The BJP and Ajit Pawar-led NCP were bitter rivals with the former having hurled several graft allegations against the leaders of the latter in the past two decades.
An opinion piece in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) mouthpiece, Organiser, in June this year created ripples within the Mahayuti alliance by openly voicing this concern.
The piece said that voters have not taken well to the BJP’s alliance with the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, which Fadnavis often describes as a “political alliance.”
There has been ample friction between Shinde and Ajit Pawar, too, with both leaders engaged in a silent power tussle, holding up files of each others’ party leaders and having credit wars for some of the populist schemes that the Mahayuti government has launched post the Lok Sabha debacle.
The three parties had a lot of hiccups in clinching a seat-sharing deal for 48 seats of the Lok Sabha polls, with candidates for some of the seats having been decided at the eleventh hour. The state assembly poll, leaders from all three parties admit, could be no different.
Banking on populist schemes
After the Lok Sabha results, the Mahayuti government has announced multiple populist schemes for almost every section of the voter base with the hopes of nullifying the effect of some of the local factors that impacted its performance.
A state government official closely working with Shinde told ThePrint that the Mahayuti government is hoping to get as much time as possible to campaign on these schemes and make disbursements before facing polls again.
The state government’s flagship scheme heading into the polls is the ‘Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana’ (My Beloved Sister), under which every eligible woman in the state in the age group of 21 to 65 years, with a family income of less than Rs 2.5 lakh, will get Rs 1,500 in her bank account every month.
Both Shinde and Pawar are busy trying to claim credit for the scheme with the chief minister advertising it as “Mukhya Mantri Majhi Ladki Bahin” scheme.
As per official records as on Thursday, the state government has deposited the amount for two months into the bank accounts of 80 lakh women since 14 August, when the disbursement was rolled out.
“But, we are also facing trouble of many accounts not being Aadhar seeded. The ruling parties can’t have a scenario where one woman with the same set of documents gets the benefit of the scheme and another from the same village doesn’t because of this technical issue. That will backfire. So, more time is needed to iron out these issues,” the official said.
Other than the Ladki Bahin scheme, the state government has also introduced a monthly stipend for unemployed job seekers, free gas cylinders for eligible families, a pension scheme for members of the Varkari sect, and free pilgrimages for senior citizens, among others.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
Also read: ‘Revdis’ galore in Haryana & Maharashtra as NDA govts seek to win back voters in assembly polls