In Maharashtra, both national parties set records—BJP its best ever tally, Congress its worst ever

Mumbai: In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had posted a massive sprawl across the Maharashtra assembly, winning 122 of the 288 seats and decimating the Congress to its worst-ever tally in the state at 42. Ten years on, both the national parties have set new records—the BJP for its best ever tally in Maharashtra, and the Congress for its worst ever performance. The Congress, which had emerged as the single largest party after the Lok Sabha elections, won just 16 of Maharashtra’s 288 assembly seats, with some of its major leaders in the state having suffered a crushing defeat.

The party had fielded candidates in 100 seats on its symbol. The BJP, which contested 149 seats in these elections, won an unprecedented 132 seats. Of the 74 seats where the Congress and the BJP were directly pitted against each other this time, the Congress was able to trounce the BJP only in seven seats.



“When I think of my party, I think of the lead song of the film Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar ,” a Mumbai-based Congress leader who did not want to be named had told ThePrint last month, in the run up to the state’s assembly polls. “The song says, ‘ Haari baazi ko jeetana hame aata hain ,’ (We can win a losing battle). In our case, it is, ‘ Jeeti baazi ko haarana hame aata hain ’ (We can lose a winning battle),” he said, explaining why his party should not sound overconfident heading into the assembly polls.

In this year’s Lok Sabha polls, the Congress had won 13 of Maharashtra’s 48 parliamentary seats. The party, which had contested 17 seats, had registered a strike rate of 76.5 percent—much more impressive than the BJP’s 32.

14 percent. The latter won nine of the 28 seats it contested. After the Lok Sabha verdict, the BJP had blamed the alleged “fake narrative” peddled by opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi about the former’s alleged intention to change the Constitution and caste-based reservations if the Narendra Modi government were to retain power for a third term.

Ahead of the assembly polls, the BJP had also blamed the consolidation of Muslim votes against the BJP for its lacklustre performance in the Lok Sabha election, terming it “ vote jihad ” and calling upon Hindus to consolidate and vote. Also read: Dynasties fall, Fadnavis rises & BJP shakes off LS jitters. Maharashtra, Jharkhand & bypoll takeaways Congress leaders feel their party faltered in responding to the Mahayuti’s Ladki Bahin scheme, which is being described as the game-changer in these elections.

A senior Congress leader who did not want to be named said, “This election, while BJP candidates went around highlighting the ‘Ladki Bahin’ scheme, Rahul Gandhi in his rallies went around waving the Indian Constitution. The issue of a threat to the Constitution can never work in a state election. They should have spoken about how their Ladki Bahin scheme is ill designed and how ours might be better.

” The Shinde-led Mahayuti government had launched the Ladki Bahin scheme in its budget in July this year after the alliance recorded a lacklustre Lok Sabha performance, winning just 17 of Maharashtra’s 48 seats. The scheme involves giving Rs 1,500 a month to eligible women in the age group of 21 to 65 years with an annual family income of Rs 2.5 lakh.

Opposition leaders initially criticised the move as the state government’s desperation in the wake of the Lok Sabha election result, and later promised a similar scheme in the MVA’s manifesto. Speaking to reporters, Maharashtra Congress President Nana Patole, who barely saved his seat with a minuscule margin of 208 votes, said, “We will introspect. We don’t believe this verdict.

” He added, “They said the Ladki Bahin scheme blessed them, now they must deliver on their manifesto promise of raising the payout to Rs 2,100 a month, free electricity for farmers 24/7 and remunerative prices for cotton and soybean farmers. We will ensure they meet every promise made during the campaign.” A party old-timer who did not want to be named said that earlier, the Congress’s parliamentary board used to sit day and night for several days in the party’s Mumbai headquarters of Tilak Bhavan, poring over every list of potential candidates for each and every assembly segment.

“That kind of detailing is now missing. In many of our seats, our candidate selection was wrong,” he said, giving the example of Ravindra Dhangekar, who lost to the BJP’s Hemant Rasane from the Kasba Peth assembly seat in Pune. He said the party had backed Dhangekar because he had dislodged the BJP from Kasba Peth, considered to be one of the BJP’s oldest bastions, in the 2023 bypoll.

“But the factors then were different. The BJP’s voters were disillusioned with the party for overlooking Brahmin aspirants in Pune. That kind of environment wasn’t there this time,” the leader said.

Hailing Dhangekar as a giant-killer for winning the BJP’s bastion, the Congress had fielded him from the Pune Lok Sabha seat this year. The candidate, however, lost by 1.23 lakh votes.

This time, he lost to the BJP’s Rasane by a margin of 19,423 votes. Also read: As ‘people’s court’ pronounces verdict in Sena vs Sena, what’s next for Uddhav & Shinde Nearly half of the 74 seats—35 to be precise—were fought in the Vidarbha region, which accounts for 62 of Maharashtra’s 288 seats. The region is home to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters as well as Deekshabhoomi.

Political watchers have often said that the road to Mumbai’s Mantralaya goes through Vidarbha, and the BJP dominated the region, winning 38 seats here. In the 35 seats where the BJP and the Congress were directly fighting each other, the Congress was able to win just five. The region, which is largely agrarian, used to be the Congress’s traditional stronghold until the 1990s, when the BJP started clawing its way in.

The BJP’s first decisive victory in Vidarbha was in 1996, when the Shiv Sena-BJP combine won all but two of the then 11 Lok Sabha seats in the region. After this, the Congress’s hold on the region began loosening. The BJP further grew its base in Vidarbha on the back of support from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and by promising to carve out a separate state for the region if it came to power.

The party’s national executive in Bhubaneswar had even officially passed a resolution supporting statehood for Vidarbha in the 1990s. The issue of statehood was absent from both the Congress and BJP campaigns in Vidarbha this election season. The BJP’s strongest performance in the region was in 2014, when it won 44 assembly seats here.

That tally dropped to 29 in 2019, and 2020 onwards, the Congress started showing signs of a comeback in the region. In the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress won five of Vidarbha’s 10 Lok Sabha seats, while the BJP won just two. According to party sources, the OBCs did not rally as strongly with the BJP as they had before as the party faltered in its choice of candidates in a few seats and there was anger among soybean and cotton producing farmers over the inability to get remunerative prices for their produce.

The lack of the RSS’s support in the Lok Sabha elections also hurt the BJP, they said. This time, some of the Congress’s veterans in the state lost their seats to Mahayuti candidates. In Karad South, former CM Prithviraj Chavan lost to the BJP’s Atulbaba Bhosale by 39,355 votes.

In Teosa in the Vidarbha region, the Congress’ Yashomati Thakur lost to the BJP’s Rajesh Wankhede by 7,617 votes. Former CM Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son Dhiraj Deshmukh lost from Latur Rural to the BJP’s Ramesh Karad by 6,595 votes. His brother, Amit Deshmukh, however, won from the neighbouring Latur City assembly seat, beating the BJP’s Archana Patil Chakurkar by 7,398 votes.

In Bhokar in Nanded district, Sreejaya Chavan, the daughter of Ashok Chavan, won against the Congress’s Tirupati Kondhekar by 50,551 votes. Former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan, who was a Congress leader, had defected to the BJP earlier this year. He is currently a BJP Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament.

Also read: From LS fillip, Haryana reality check, to Maharashtra fiasco, Congress staring at a long winter again var ytflag = 0;var myListener = function() {document.removeEventListener('mousemove', myListener, false);lazyloadmyframes();};document.addEventListener('mousemove', myListener, false);window.

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