Chandigarh, June 07
After the BJP-led NDA won only 17 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis offered to resign, taking full responsibility for the results. He requested the top BJP leadership to relieve him from the responsibilities in the state government to enable him to strengthen the party ahead of the Assembly elections.
The NDA had set a target of 45 seats for the alliance in the state that sends the second largest number of MPs, as many as 48, to the Lok Sabha.
Results from Maharashtra significantly dented the overall tally of the NDA.
The BJP, which contested 28 seats, won nine, down 14 from the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Overall, the party managed to get just 17 seats along with allies Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party.
Failure to counter opposition narrative regarding the scrapping of the Constitution, farmers’ issues related to the price of onion, cotton and soybean etc were said to be the key reasons for the NDA’s poor showing along with sympathy factor for “original leaders of the NCP and Shiv Sena, Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, respectively”.
Fadnavis’ offer to silence detractors?
As expected, Fadnavis’ offer was met with resistance from NDA leaders, including Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Observers say the BJP leadership is not expected to accept his resignation and Fadnavis, too, may not pursue the matter. The announcement is said to be only meant to keep critics within the party and the government at bay, as per reports.
However, Fadnavis is also believed to be not on the same page with Shinde and Ajit Pawar on several issues. Some of his recommendations were also overruled by the central leadership during the Lok Sabha polls.
Can BJP, allies bounce back
The big question is will the BJP and allies be able to bounce back from the Lok Sabha debacle in time for the Assembly polls scheduled later this year.
The Ajit Pawar faction contributed just one seat to the NDA kitty in Maharashtra. According to reports, five of his MLAs were missing at the review meeting to discuss the party’s Lok Sabha poll performance, leading to speculation about its future.
Meanwhile, according to sources, the BJP leadership is also believed to be “working on wooing back Uddhav Thackeray with the help of common friends and RSS”.
According to observers, the BJP’s “political machinations” to gain power in Maharashtra never allowed the state to really settle down since the last Assembly elections and there was a “good amount of public sympathy” for Uddhav and Sharad Pawar.
The BJP may have gained power by breaking the Shiv Sena and the NCP but could not work around their supporters’ “natural sympathy” towards “original leaders Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray”.
Uddhav, who was projected as the face of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition, won nine seats, two more than Shinde-led Sena which won seven. However, Ajit Pawar, who walked away with the name and the symbol of the party created by uncle Sharad Pawar, was easily the bigger loser.
Damage control
“Getting on board Ajit Pawar and former CM Ashok Chavan, two leaders with corruption charges, was a mistake,” say analysts. For the Assembly elections, the BJP will have to work around that plus the distress among Dalits who constitute 10.5% vote bank.
It will also have to counter rural distress in the state where a sizable population is engaged in agriculture—the sugarcane belt of western Maharashtra, soybean and cotton farmers of Vidarbha and Marathwada region and onion cultivators. Multiplied by climate challenges and policy decisions, farmers’ anger was evident, experts say.
