Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde with Deputy Chief Ministers Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar flashes victory sign during a press conference as the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance secures victory amid the counting of votes for the Maharashtra Assembly elections, in Mumbai, Saturday.
Credit: PTI Photo
Mumbai: As people gave an unprecedented electoral sweep in favour of Maha Yuti (NDA) in the Vidhan Sabha polls in Maharashtra on Saturday, it became very clear what worked for the alliance.
It was the RSS-BJP joint election management which was missing during the Lok Sabha polls and the reach of populist cash-benefit game-changer schemes like Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana that propelled the Maha Yuti to a massive victory.
Besides, people accepted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘ek hai to safe hai’ narrative and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s ‘batange to katange’ slogan which was amplified by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
The masses seem to have rejected the ‘Save Constitution’, ‘threat to reservation' and ‘caste census’ narrative of Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and attacks of Congress President Malikarjun Kharge saying that PM is "jhooton a sardar" and RSS-BJP a "poisonous snake".
It was a thumbs up to the trio of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar - who made a turnaround of the state after the Covid-19 pandemic.
An astute politician, Fadnavis started off with the ‘urban naxal and anarchist’ narrative against Gandhi and took it to the scale of dharma-yuddha vs vote-jihad.
Another thing that worked is that among the masses there was sort of a guilt for hitting Modi very hard despite successes like Ram Mandir and abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir and banning triple-talaq.
Mumbai-MMR votes for development
The Mumbai and the larger Mumbai metropolitan region, which forms the part of the coastal Konkan belt, voted for development. Not only the Ladki Bahin scheme worked here but also the toll waiver in Mumbai and a series of infrastructure projects that came up in Mumbai-MMR which include Metro lines, Coastal Road and Atal Setu.
The impact of the emerging situation would be seen in the civic polls whenever it is held. The undivided Shiv Sena had controlled the BMC for close to quarter of a century.
In fact, Maharashtra got two successive CMs from the region - Uddhav Thackeray from Mumbai and Eknath Shinde from Thane.
Controlling the Mumbai-MMR was big and here Shinde’s son Dr Shrikant Shinde, the Kalyan MP, played a major role.
“Even before the election announcement, Dr Shinde took a people’s outreach tour, working on party organization, meeting with workers, holding meetings, and organizing gatherings in potential constituencies," Sena leaders said.
The supremacy of Uddhav Thackeray over the region has been shattered - and his anti-development projects involving Ratnagiri super refinery, Jaitapur plant seems not to have taken any takers. The Shindes and the Rane family have now established total control in the three districts of Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg.
Sugar belt favours BJP and NCP as Sharad Pawar’s strategy fails
The Western Maharashtra sugar belt was the main battleground of Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar. The senior Pawar, known as the Maratha strongmen, attempted to corner the candidates of his nephew, however, Ajit Pawar breached it. Ajit Pawar won the family seat of Baramati for the record eight times -defeating his own nephew Yugendra Pawar, who has been pitted by his uncle. The once Congress and undivided NCP bastion, which also houses Pune, failed to perform well despite agrarian crisis. Whether it is Pune, Sangli, Satara or Kolhapur, the BJP and Ajit Pawar dealt a heavy blow to Sharad Pawar, who had travelled the region extensively despite his age and health issues. One thing that seemed to work for Pawar here is his direct attacks on his nephew and his aides. In fact, he had called some of the defectors as traitors - which is very unlike Pawar. “We have seen that there is a wave in our favour,” said Ajit Pawar, who had taken the Ladki Bahin scheme to the farmers' houses in the region. The Maya Yuti consolidated the OBC as well as Maratha vote banks dealing the worst blow to Pawar, who had reached out to his political rivals and sugar barons in the region.
Onion did not bring tears this time in North Maharashtra
The BJP suffered badly in the Lok Sabha polls because of the onion crisis and farmers' resentment in North Maharashtra, which is the vegetable and fruit bowl of the state. It is the onion capital, banana capital, grapes capital. The region has large stretches of tribal belt including Nandurbar, which has a close relationship with the Gandhi family.
In fact, onion brought tears to the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls. Rebellion too hit the Maha Yuti - as four MPs who are contested as rebels including Chhagan Bhujbal’s nephew Sameer Bhujbal, a former Nashik MP, who is contested from Nandgaon, Gavit’s daughter Dr Heena Gavit, a two-time Nandurbar MP from Akkalkuwa and AT Patil, former Jalgaon MP from Erandol.
The BJP successfully quelled the rebellion and combated the onion crisis by lifting the export ban.
“We are surrounded by problems during the Lok Sabha polls, however, now the situation is largely okay. Onion is not an issue this time,” said Bharat Dighole, the founder-president of Maharashtra State Onion Producers’ Association.
Fadnavis’s close aide Girish Mahajan and Shiv Sena’s Gulabrao Patil worked silently in the region to combat movies to veteran leader Eknath Khadse, who had left BJP and went to Pawar camp. His daughter Rohini Khadse, who is the state women wing chief of NCP (SP) who contested the Muktainagar seat in Jalgaon, lost the polls to Chandrakant Patil of Shiv Sena. Khadse’s daughter-in-law and Raver MP is a BJP minister of state in the Modi dispensation.
Jarange-Patil factor fail to work in Marathwada
The complex Maratha reservation issue and the Manoj Jarange-Patil factor has not clicked in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly polls just six months after it played havoc during the Lok Sabha polls.
The Jarange-factor was expected to damage the prospects of BJP-led Maha Yuti, however, the saffron party and its fountainhead RSS did the arithmetic right and helped out the candidates.
For more than a year, Marathwada has emerged as the hotbed of the caste conflict between the Marathas and the Other Backward Classes - and the impact was felt by the BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP alliance.
Jarange-Patil’s target was Fadnavis because of last year’s lathicharge. However, Shinde managed to reach out to him but Jarange-Patil, he founder of Shivba Sanghatana, kept on escalating the demands.
Jarange-Patil conducts the Maratha reservation campaign from the Antarwali Sarathi village in the Ambad tehsil of Jalna district.
On the other hand, Wadigodri is the place near Jarange-Patil’s village from where Laxman Hake leads the OBC resistance. In fact, BJP consolidated its tried and tested Madhav-formula, which stands for large OBC groups - Mali-Dhangar-Vanjari as against the DMK of the Congress, which stands of Dalit-Muslim-Kunbi. The RSS outreach did the turnaround.
Campaign nullifies soybean, cotton farmers issue
When the campaign started, it was difficult for BJP to reverse the Vidarbha situation - which the numbers of MLAs have come down from 2014 to 2019 and a setback in Lok Sabha when the saffron party could win just one of the 10 seats.
In Vidarbha, traditionally, the Congress has depended on the Kunbi-OBC votes while the BJP Teli-OBC votes. Last time the impact was felt when Chandrashekar Bawankule was denied a ticket, however, the BJP amended it and made him the BJP President. Nagpur, the hub of Vidarbha is the headquarters of the RSS. Fadnavis, Bawankule and Nitin Gadkari all from Nagpur. “We took several steps to ensure that the Lok Sabha pattern does not get repeated in Assembly polls,” said Bawankule. However, state Congress President Nana Patole, who too is from Vidarbha said that the result does not match with the realities on the ground. “It cannot be denied that there is farm distress in Vidarbha,” said Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Kishor Tiwari, who is also the founder-President of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti.
In Vidarbha too, the RSS did lot of groundwork.
One of the things that did not work for the MVA as the seat sharing between Congress and Uddhav Sena stretched too long and the infighting came out in public. Patole flagged the issue of farmers and wrote to Modi on the issue of MSP even as Gandhi made several guarantees, but the BJP managed to turn tables.
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Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls took place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP went up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress tried to make their mark. Maha Yuti are currently comfortably poised to win. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faced a challenge after Hemant Soren's arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP, but look set to retain power with its I.N.D.I.A. allies. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.
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