With the Election Commission announcing that the elections to the 288-member Maharashtra assembly will be held on November 20, all eyes are on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), single largest party in the ruling Mahayuti coalition that runs the state.
The saffron camp is eyeing a comeback after a dismal performance in the Lok Sabha elections in the state six months ago.
Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on June 5 offered to resign, a day after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections.
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The BJP’s face in Maharashtra had taken responsibility for the party winning just nine seats in the Lok Sabha elections in the state, down from 23 in 2014 and 2019. In Maharashtra, the state that sends 48 members to the lower house of parliament, BJP’s vote share dipped by one per cent from 27.84 per cent to 26.45 per cent.
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What’s at stake for BJP?
The assembly election in Maharashtra is indeed a litmus test for the BJP. A poll victory will further boost the morale of the party after it stunned pollsters to buck 10-year anti-incumbency in Haryana.
A larger share of seats will give BJP an edge in bargaining for power with its alliance partners Shiv Sena and NCP.
An expected performance will blunt the opposition’s charges of ‘Operation Lotus’, which the BJP has time and again denied.
What if BJP loses Maharashtra assembly elections?
After the BJP’s overall seat tally was reduced to 240 in the general elections, the opposition INDIA bloc has been claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity is on the decline.
If the Maharashtra assembly elections don’t turn out to be as per the BJP’s expectations, it will affect Modi’s image. A win for opposition bloc will prove that the 2024 Lok Sabha poll performance was not a fluke.
For the past ten years, the BJP has been the single largest party in the Maharashtra assembly. In 2014, the saffron party had contested the assembly elections independently after its alliance with undivided Shiv Sena broke.
The BJP, fighting the first election under Narendra Modi and then party chief Amit Shah, won 122 seats. The undivided Shiv Sena came on board and both the parties ran a coalition government till 2019.
In the 2019 elections, the BJP won 105 seats and the undivided Sena bagged 56. Just when it seemed that the government formation would be smooth, Uddhav Thackeray demanded rotational chief ministership and equal share of power. Both the parties parted ways, with Thackeray joining hands with Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (undivided) for a coalition government he headed as the chief minister.
However, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government did not last long as Thackeray’s party colleague Eknath Shinde in 2022 rebelled with 40 of his MLAs and reduced the ruling alliance to a minority. Shinde joined hands with the BJP in the state. Last year, NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit split his uncle’s party and joined the ruling coalition.
