Like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra has turned out to be a disaster for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It has not just rejected the prime minister and Union home minister Amit Shah’s politics outright in the Lok Sabha polls, but has signalled a fiercer fight ahead in the assembly polls scheduled by November this year.
‘Panipat’ is a dreaded word in Marathi, since the defeat of the Marathas in the third war of Panipat at the hands of Ahmed Shah Abdali in 1761.
The ‘Panipat’ of the BJP has raised questions on the continuance of the Eknath Shinde experiment in the state that has failed to stabilise in the past two years.
What has happened in Maharashtra has not just led to a convincing stop of Modi’s juggernaut but has also made mincemeat of the BJP’s strategy to dominate Maharashtra, by hook or crook.
BJP and its allies which commanded 41 out of 48 seats from the state in the outgoing Lok Sabha, fell to just 17 in the face of a combative Shiv Sena (Uddhav Bal Thackeray), Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress, which fought unitedly and with tact.
The road ahead for Modi is now treacherous, especially in Maharashtra where the BJP now carries a lot of deadwood by importing leaders including controversial ones from other parties in droves. It is now an albatross around the neck of the world’s largest party.
What could be worrying for Modi is that voices challenging his leadership could emerge from Maharashtra BJP given the fact that he and Shah have sidelined many a leader in the party, despite their seniority.
Already, there have been demands from the opposition that Modi should step aside as the results show his moral defeat.
It should not be forgotten that the late Pramod Mahajan was the boss of the BJP in the state and at the national level much before the emergence of Modi.
But when it rains, it pours. This has happened for the hapless BJP which has lost ground in most of the regions. In Mumbai, Uddhav Thackeray has shown that he is the boss and that his Sena is “not nakli”. Modi had alleged it was the imposter Sena.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
It was a series of strategic blunders, miscalculations and overconfidence that did the BJP in. This included the PM likening Sharad Pawar to a ‘bhatkati atma’ or wandering soul.
In Vidarbha, Congress has made deep inroads at BJP’s cost. The result was that BJP could secure Nitin Gadkari’s Nagpur and Budhana only.
Bringing Ashok Chavan to the BJP has hardly helped. BJP has suffered in Marathwada, too, including in Chavan’s home turf of Nanded. In sugar-rich Western Maharashtra too, the BJP had to bite dust in some constituencies due to the opposition’s deft handling of the situation. The Congress victory in tribal-dominated Nandurbar, bordering Gujarat, tells its own story as does the party winning in Akola where Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, finished third.
Opposition leaders allege that the BJP had poured in a massive Rs 2,000 crore in the Maharashtra campaign to blunt its detractors who were not resource rich.
After Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra has turned out to be the most difficult state for the BJP. Regional pride helped the opposition to not just find a common cause but also to take the battle to the BJP’s turf.
With Supriya Sule winning the prestigious Baramati seat by 158,333 votes, BJP’s strategy of demolishing Sharad Pawar in his pocket borough has boomeranged badly.
Baramati was supposed to be the ‘Kohinoor’ for the BJP, but alas.
Also read: The ‘Battle of Plassey’ in Maharashtra: Is BJP’s ‘Project Demolition Pawar’ Likely to Succeed?
Maharashtra has in a way witnessed ‘Maha Bharat’ with the BJP doing everything possible to reconfigure state politics to its advantage, using any means. This was done by not only just splitting two regional parties but also widening family feuds in rival parties to get a larger political pie. This has not gone down well with people.
The refrain in political circles is that the BJP led by Modi-Shah forced Deputy CM Ajit Pawar to field his wife Sunetra against Supriya. It also brought in Raj Thackeray to campaign against the party of his nephew and former CM Uddhav Thackeray’s party to damage him politically. But nothing worked.
In fact, such moves which were dubbed as “politics of vengeance” by the detractors of the BJP helped in generating sympathy for Uddhav, and also Sharad Pawar.
The defeat of some BJP Union ministers shows the extent of anger among the people in a state against the ruling party where the PM held record rallies.
Signs of disharmony and dispute were visible in the Mahayuti – grand alliance – comprising the BJP, Ajit Pawar’s NCP and CM Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction soon after the Modi-Shah duo played big brother in the allocation of seats.
What is going unnoticed for now is how Sharad Pawar is set to play a key role in New Delhi in the INDIA scheme of things. He could act as its Chanakya, to checkmate the BJP in every which way.
It should not be forgotten that in early 1999, Pawar had played a crucial role in getting the five-member Bahujan Samaj Party to vote against the Vajpayee government in the vote of confidence, resulting in the collapse of the government. The octogenarian leader has several scores to settle with Modi-Shah and he enjoys rare rapport with Rahul as well as Sonia Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge.
The brazen manner in which the BJP went about the task to split rival parties created huge sympathy for Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar, who exploited the victim card to the hilt.
Maharashtra had never seen such “Aaya Ram Gaya Ram” politics where loyalties were changed allegedly with the lure of pelf and power.
The opposition campaign of ‘ pachas che khokhe, ekdam okay (the box containing 50 crore rupees working wonders)’ captivated popular imagination, giving a bad name to the defectors.
It is now problems galore for the BJP as Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, its point man in Maharashtra, has not proved useful and there is no time to find his replacement as the Assembly polls are around the corner. Gadkari is not interested in coming to state politics and in the changed scheme of things, he will like to be in New Delhi.
Also read: Is a New Power Centre Emerging in the BJP Under Nitin Gadkari to Counter Modi-Shah?
Interestingly, the former national president of the BJP has virtually been made a persona non grata in state BJP and everyone knows who is behind this.
BJP will have to take urgent calls on a variety of issues in Maharashtra. Ajit Pawar has shown that he has become a liability. Chief Minister Shinde has kept a bit of relevance but he is of not much use to the BJP in changed circumstances. There have been no easy answers and the questions are pressing. BJP has found itself in a whirlpool of its own making.
Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.
