Mumbai: Despite party splits, name and symbol changes, and raids by central investigating agencies, the Mahavikas Aghadi – a collective front of the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) – has emerged as the true winner of this general election.
The trio is set to win at least 30 out of the 48 seats in Maharashtra.
The Congress, which had won only one seat in 2019, has emerged as the largest winning party this election, winning three seats and showing a clear lead in another ten seats (as of 9 pm).
Thackeray’s Sena is winning in nine seats and Sharad Pawar’s NCP in eight. The leads in almost all seats are likely to convert into wins.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Maharashtra, the second largest state after Uttar Pradesh, sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha. In 2019, under Devendra Fadnavis’s leadership, the BJP had managed to win 22 of the 25 seats the party had contested.
This time, however, the party is showing leads in only nine seats. Interestingly, the party contested 28 seats, three more than in 2019.
Both Ajit Pawar’s NCP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena have proved to be a liability for the BJP. Ajit Pawar’s NCP had contested five seats but managed to win just one (Raigad). Similarly, Shinde’s party contested 14 seats but has managed a lead only in six.
The election in Maharashtra was among the most chaotic. Throughout the month-and-a-half-long election campaign, people’s issues barely found any mention. Neither side focused on pressing issues like drought, price hikes, the agrarian crisis and unemployment.
While the BJP’s candidates invoked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and talked of his achievements in their campaigns, the Mahavikas Aghadi candidates spent their resources simply reiterating their respective parties’ new names and symbols.
Thackeray’s Shiv Sena contested on a new symbol, the flaming torch, and Sharad Pawar’s party took up a Marathi folk musical instrument called the tutaari (a kind of trumpet) as the party symbol.
Most candidates complained about how they got very little time to take their party symbol to the voters.
Considering the challenge faced, the parties have done exceptionally well in the election.
Also read: Why Maharashtra Signals a Decline of the Modi-Shah Brand of Politics
It was, however, the anger against the BJP in the state that helped the opposition overcome their unpreparedness. The writing was on the wall. Or why else would Modi make 18 visits to the state after the election was announced in March?
The Wire’s team, during its visit across different constituencies in the state, found voters angry with the government’s failure to address basic livelihood issues. The BJP, oblivious to their voters’ concerns, harped on the Ram Mandir and the “asli” and “nakli” (‘real’ and ‘fake’) Shiv Sena and NCP.
The party seems to have faced a significant blow from the numerically dominant Maratha community. There has been a palpable anger in the community against the BJP. Just in the past year, Maratha activist Manoj Jarange-Patil went on hunger strike at least four times, repeatedly demanding reservation for the community in government jobs and education in Maharashtra.
Given that the Mahayuti coalition, comprising the BJP, Shinde’s faction and Ajit Pawar’s NCP, continues to drag its feet on the assurances given to Jarange-Patil and the Maratha community, he no longer wants to trust the government.
Mumbai results
The BJP and its allies suffered a major setback in the six constituencies of Mumbai. Out of the six, the ruling parties are winning in only two seats – Mumbai North and Mumbai North West.
Piyush Goyal, the Union commerce minister, is contesting against the Congress’s Bhushan Patil in Mumbai North.
And in Mumbai North West, Ravindra Waikar of the Shinde Sena and Amol Kirtikar of the Thackeray Sena had a neck-to-neck battle, seeing margins of less than 100 votes through the day.
Around 5 pm, after electronic votes were counted, Kirtikar was leading by just one vote. At 6:30 pm, Waikar demanded that the rejected postal votes be recounted. Following this, he was leading by 48 votes.
Both candidates then approached the returning officer to have the 111 invalid or rejected postal ballot votes re-evaluated. The returning officer agreed to revaluation under camera scrutiny and following this exercise, Waikar was finally declared a winner.
Also read: In Thane, a Contest Between the Senas; Communal Pitch in Mira Road Ebbs After HC Intervention
Other winners are Arvind Sawant of the Thackeray Sena from Mumbai South, Anil Desai of the same party from Mumbai South Central, Varsha Gaikwad of the Congress from Mumbai North Central, Amol Kirtikar of the Thackeray Sena from Mumbai North West and Sanjay Dina Patil also of the Thackeray Sena from Mumbai North East.
The BJP’s loss in Mumbai stands out particularly because PM Modi himself carried out several road shows and rallies here. Modi made two visits – with a gap of three days – to Mumbai before phase 5 of the election, when Mumbai’s six constituencies had polled. The BJP organised a roadshow for Modi that stretched over 2.5 kilometres between Ashok Silk Mills in Ghatkopar (West) to Parshawanath Chowk in Ghatkopar (East).
This was just days after a tragic incident of a hoarding collapse in the area, which claimed 17 lives and injured close to 100 people.
Patil from Thackeray’s faction is winning from the constituency.
The fight in Mumbai, however, has been a close one, especially for Gaikwad and Kirtikar. Gaikwad, a Congress veteran, won against senior lawyer and BJP candidate Ujjwal Nikam by just 16,514 votes.
The Congress took a risk of uprooting Gaikwad from her home base Mumbai South Central and fielding her from the neighbouring North Central constiutency.
In April, the Mahavikas Aghadi was faced with a major challenge from within, and Mumbai South Central, Mumbai North and Sangli continued to be a contentious issue. Gaikwad, who is also Mumbai regional Congress chief, wanted to contest from the Mumbai South Central seat where her father Eknath Gaikwad was an MP.
Gaikwad was upset but accepted the party’s decision and contested from a new constituency, where she barely got time to campaign.
Similarly, in Sangli, the Congress faced a different struggle. The Congress’s Vishal Patil, the grandson of former chief minister Vasantdada Patil, wanted to contest from the constituency.
But the MVA coalition decided to field a Thackeray Sena candidate from the seat. Vishal Patil decided to contest as an independent candidate and has finally managed to win against Chandrahar Patil of the Thackeray faction by over a comfortable one lakh vote margin.
