Union Home Minister Amit Shah
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Keeping an eye on the crucial upcoming assembly elections in three states of Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, Union Home minister Amit Shah is set to visit each of them to take stock of the situation.
Sources in the BJP said that he will first head to Haryana on June 29, and then on to Maharashtra on July 5. He will also visit Jharkhand thereafter.
Shah is set to meet party leaders in Panchkula on June 29, said party leaders. In Haryana, the BJP is staring at trouble since it lost half of the state’s 10 Lok Sabha seats; in 2019 they had swept the state winning all 10. What is more troubling is that the Congress managed to win 43.67 per cent of the vote share in these elections – a jump of 15 per cent.
The party, keen to work early, had assigned union minister Dharmenrda Pradhan and former Tripura CM Biplan Deb as poll-incharges to the state on June 17, months ahead of November when the polls are due.
“The silver lining for us is that the BJP alone got 46.11% of the votes, which is more than the Congress, JJP and INLD combined,” one of the in-charges told DH. It must be noted that the BJP’s vote share decreased 12 per cent from the previous Lok Sabha polls.
In Maharashtra, the party is looking to have a consensus on matters with its key allies – the Shiv Sena (UBT faction) and NCD (Ajit Pawar faction). The BJP lost most of the seats in the state, it won only 9 of the 28 seats it contested. Its allies could win only 8 seats among them. Once the elections were over, Ajit Pawar declined a seat in the council of ministers for Praful Patel since he was offered a MoS position; he had previously been a Cabinet minister.
The upcoming elections in these states, especially in Maharashtra and Haryana, could prove to be electorally decisive for the BJP, which has been reeling after it lost majority in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The party had come to power with the help of its allies, TDP and JDU, and so, the assembly polls in these states will either make or break it for the saffron party in terms of optics.