Lessons from the Maharashtra Civic Polls: Why Progressives Need to Urgently Focus on the Booth

After a six-year delay, the Maharashtra state election commission notified the local body polls in the state only after the intervention of the Supreme Court last year. The elections were held between December 2025 and February 2026. In addition to this delay and alleged misappropriation of funds, the Mahayuti government, with the willing consent of the Election Commission, further complicated matters by gerrymandering constituencies, merging four constituencies into one, requiring each party to field a panel of four candidates.

Since such polls are hyper-localised, this move meant that voters did not know all candidates, and parties with the most resources were best placed to showcase their panels effectively. This capital-intensive campaign naturally benefited the Mahayuti government (comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) and the Nationalist Congress Party (led by late Ajit Pawar)). 

Despite this, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) put up a brave and spirited campaign. In 29 municipal corporation elections, the Congress party won 324 seats, the Shiv Sena (UBT) won 154, and the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) won 36. It is now increasingly clear that the Congress party has emerged as the principal opposition party against the BJP (which won 1425 out of the total 2869 seats across Maharashtra).

Although it will be an uphill battle, the Congress party is well positioned to grow by the next round of elections in 2029, especially given any anti-incumbency and progressive vote would invariably gravitate towards a strong alternative. Given this possibility, a detailed SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis comparing the Congress and the BJP campaigns in Maharashtra is needed. This analysis is limited to the Kolhapur district, which has 81 municipal seats, 67 zilla parishad seats and 12 panchayat samitis, comprising 134 panchayat samiti wards in total.

Juxtaposing Congress’s and BJP’s campaigns

Under the stewardship of legislative council leader and Kolhapur district president Satej Bunty Patil, the Congress party prepared a forward-looking manifesto, and conducted over 20 sabhas (rallies) for the municipal polls and over 40 sabhas for the zilla parishad polls. Their campaign was people-centric, the main slogan was “Kolhapur Kasa, Tumhi Mhanal Tasa” (Kolhapur will be what you say it should be like), and consciously eschewed any negative campaigning. Numerous progressive thinkers, professionals and activists were roped in for the campaign, and it genuinely felt like everyone was working to forge a better Kolhapur.

In stark contrast, the BJP in Kolhapur did not prepare a manifesto, was excessively reliant on negative campaigning and did not focus on large sabhas. It propagated negative narratives through dogmatic repetition of two meta-narratives – a) the nation, Hindus and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi are under threat (from both internal and external forces), and hence there's a need for a triple-engine Sarkar for securing vikaas (development), which they had long promised and b) the Congress party only works to enrich its dynasts, did not do anything for 60 years; they mostly caricatured Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.

In fact, Prime Minister Modi and home minister Amit Shah’s speeches (both in parliament and when the latter came to campaign in Maharashtra for the local body polls) were actively leveraged as toolkits by BJP workers (which suggests that perhaps the BJP’s top leadership isn’t particularly concerned about speaking about facts, logic or even the national interest and are instead consciously arming their workers with narratives).

Even the Samvidhan Bachao (Save constitution) campaign and narrative spearheaded by Gandhi has been successfully countered by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS's) Sajag Raho Abhiyan (Stay Vigilant Campaign). Organised every Saturday in colonies, Sajag Raho only focuses on marshalling the age groups of 15-18 (first time voters) and 60 onwards (the retired).

Camouflaged through religio-cultural activities like Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s Aarti (prayers) and Ram Raksha pravachans (Save Lord Ram lectures), these are designed to collectivise local communities, where the local RSS shakha ram home the point that Hindu society and culture will survive only if political Hindutva is electorally hegemonic. In making this point, they also insidiously claim the BJP is only furthering Shivaji Maharaj’s efforts of creating a Hindu Rashtra (conveniently obfuscating the import of Maharaj’s life and body of work). 

This social conditioning has been very cleverly operationalised, and is clearly designed to eliminate individual capacity for independent reasoning. The BJP’s focus is to ensure group conformity through narrative hijacking and emotional contagion. This works best when the local community is not well organised and does not meet frequently. This is usually in urban or peri-urban areas, where communities don’t meet at panchayats or other community events, and generally do not know one another intimately. This is common in urban areas, where parts of one city obliviously co-exist with  each other. 

Dissecting operational methodologies – workers, campaign tactics and tools

The vehicles for propagating BJP’s narratives were typically the least educated (individuals who had studied only till grade eighth or tenth standard). They were roped in either through shakhas or identified by BJP workers. In both cases, the BJP catches them young. The primary task of these local BJP workers was to repeatedly speak to parents, relatives and immediate neighbours, and either convert them by fomenting dissatisfaction against the Congress party or to ensure they don’t go to vote.

Even though these workers have no scope for upward political mobility, what is sold to them is the glory and pride in fighting for Hindutva (what the Mycenaeans called Kleos). This is complemented with the BJP’s robust feedback gathering mechanism, with its office-bearers and legislators meeting academics, editors, reporters and other professionals to understand what the RSS-BJP could be doing better, and to exchange ideas.

Interestingly, the BJP’s sub-district level organisation unlike the RSS is not as robust as what’s usually propagated. Typically, in a village of 2,400, the BJP relies on about 15 odd workers with whom it has a transactional arrangement. Some people this author spoke to said that the BJP has paid them a small amount of money, along with food and alcohol, in the four weeks before an election to disseminate negative narratives. The author was not able to confirm this with BJP office-bearers.

Having said this, the BJP is scrupulous in identifying and promptly promoting the most dynamic workers in every village for district-level work (partly so new electoral contenders don’t arise at the constituency levels).

In stark contrast, in every village and ward, there were at least 20-25 active Congress workers. Although they are typically split into multiple factions, they are wanting and waiting to be constructively channelised.

For now, at least in Kolhapur, they were zealously attached to and driven by Patil. This inevitably put tremendous pressure on him and he had to also devote considerable time and effort to manage local dynamics and operationalise micro-stratagems. 

With regard to campaign tactics, the Congress workers diligently organised rallies and other tried and tested activities, right until the silent period. Then they coalesced at the polling booth.

Contrastingly, the BJP deployed its district level workers (not the village-level workers who function like counter-intelligence units), who ran a sophisticated campaign for the last two days (after the silent period), to either dissuade/disincentivise Congress voters to not vote or to bring out the vote from every household which they felt would have voted for the BJP. They openly claimed that they had to ensure only about five percent of the opposition’s vote is disturbed and maximise their own vote.

There was also a stark contrast between how the Congress party and the BJP organised social media.

Although Patil has adopted social media extensively, and despite his best efforts, local Congress leaders still leverage social media in an antiquated manner (just putting out posts of their rallies and schedules) or outsourcing it entirely to small agencies (who then focus on making reels or shorts of the candidate in different phases of the election with over-the-top visual effects and upbeat music).

The BJP reportedly trained at least one person per booth to prepare content around negative narratives outlined earlier, according to this author's interaction with local BJP workers.

For the BJP, content on and around the candidate was a secondary priority. The person who managed the party's social media handle at the local level was authorised to disburse money to local influencers – who corroborated these details on conditions of anonymity – such as village grocer, postman, occasionally an Anganwadi worker, some village elders etc. Each of them was allegedly paid Rs 2 for every view they managed to get after uploading the BJP’s content as their WhatsApp status (not X or Facebook or even Instagram; although Instagram is fast becoming an important source of consumption in urban areas).

Obviously, the person managing the account only selected village influencers with at least 2,000 followers and regularly monitored the reach of their WhatsApp status. In fact, BJP leaders relied on this dependable support system, that assiduously worked independently of the local leader’s electoral compulsions and needs.

The BJP’s grassroots campaign in these local body elections was also very different from the Congress’s.

While the Congress relied on fomenting a positive mahaul (atmosphere) through rallies, town halls, manifestos, social media content, and roadshows. Barring a few notable exceptions, even the candidates focused on creating an impression as they did walk-byes in colonies with large crowds. They rarely went into households and engaged intimately with families (although Patil did take initiative to do this in numerous colonies with some candidates).

The BJP almost exclusively focused on visiting households in villages or wards in small batches. They consistently tried to get some water or tea from the household they visited (thus enabling them to spark a conversation). They were not shy about initiating embarrassing and awkward conversations until someone in a family was persuaded. That was the chink they sought to exploit, which was why they tried visiting each family at least four times in the run up to the polls – a strategy they reportedly use every election.

Voter motivations: An incomplete sketch

Then there’s the voter. The BJP targets the traditional voter whose world-view is rooted in faith, duty (towards family and community), honour and fear.

The BJP actively foments the narrative that the people’s moral imperative and duty is only to “their circle” – typically their family and religious community (characterised as “our people”). Everyone else is deemed a threat and a national enemy.

Evidence-based counters or even scriptural prescriptions appealing for better treatment for all humans fall on deaf ears since history, contemporary events, faith, culture and even facts are politically and selectively twisted to reinforce the dehumanising lie that we are in a constant battle with the ‘other’, who is grabbing power, status and opportunities. The propaganda is relentless and people don’t have the time to step back and reflect on the truth. The people start self-deceiving themselves and compromising themselves (although this is not beyond repair yet).

At a community level, Muslims, Dalits as well as progressive Marathas and general castes are gravitating towards the Congress party. While 64% of the total Dalit community in Maharashtra (the Neo-Buddhist community) is primarily with the Congress (although in pockets splintered amongst other parties), there is a looming threat to Dalit unity.

Given that the Mahayuti government is about to operationalise sub-categorisation (which will benefit the remaining 57 Scheduled Castes), there is bound to be a splintering of the Dalit vote. It would be counterproductive to keep approaching the Dalit community as a monolithic bloc. Similarly, even the Muslim vote is splintering. This is either because some Muslim community leaders are aligning themselves with either the Shiv Sena (Shinde) and NCP (Ajit Pawar), which are parties being supported by the BJP to divide the secular vote (especially the Maratha-Kunbi vote), or because of fundamentalist parties who openly propagate (mirroring the BJP) that Muslim and Hindu interests are mutually antagonistic.

These are the challenges that the Congress will need to urgently focus on and work to build a larger rainbow coalition of every community. Yes, the Congress will invariably get the anti-incumbency and progressive vote in 2029, resulting in a net increase in vote share. However this will be unevenly dispersed across the state, and may not result in targeted gains at the constituency levels. Urgent and concerted social engineering efforts are needed both at the macro and micro levels, to ensure the Congress effectively increases its support base. 

Local civil society activists alleged that the BJP frequently engaged in illegal practices aimed at voter disenfranchisement. Reportedly on one hand, some unscrupulous Block Level Officers (BLOs) were allegedly “managed” to remove voters – around ten in every village – often people who migrated into another village post marriage or who migrated for work. In many cases, they allegedly belonged to families known to support the Congress, said local activists who kept a watch on the electoral rolls, observing that this indicated close monitoring by local BJP workers.

It may not seem significant, but as opposition parties have alleged, there have been massive discrepancies in voter lists across the state. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) claimed that there were 96 lakh bogus voters statewide, with ten lakh in Mumbai alone. This echoes the 2024 Assembly elections, when 6.55 lakh voters were allegedly added just four days before polling.

On the other hand, at least three sarpanches, speaking on condition of anonymity, alleged that the BJP added a few people – no more than five per village – between 16 and 18 years of age to the voter list. Another set of sarpanches alleged that the party reportedly colluded with local authorities to prevent Congress workers from assisting elderly voters, especially those known to support the Congress, by claiming that such assistance amounted to voter interference.

Conclusion: What next?

Despite how organised the BJP may seem, it is unlikely that its transactional model of politics will survive for long. Although this analysis is limited to Kolhapur, the Congress still has a strong presence in every village and ward, which provides the foundations of a robust organisation.

As things stand today, these energies are being single-handedly mobilised by Patil, whose extraordinary efforts have marshalled and engaged Congress workers. It is largely because of these efforts that the Congress in Kolhapur emerged as the single largest opposition party in all three polls – no mean feat, given the unprecedented resources, administrative support, and plurality of forces brought to bear against it.

Going forward, there is a clear and urgent need to institutionalise and channel these energies at the booth level. It isn’t rocket science; it requires focused, sustained hard work. With 3,500 booths across two Lok Sabha constituencies in Kolhapur and 1,140 days until the next election, the Congress has its task cut out. But it can – and must – be done. This is a process worth replicating across Maharashtra and could well catapult the Congress into pole position by 2029.

There is also a lesson here for all progressive forces outside the political fold, especially civil society. Instead of symbolic protests aimed at naming and shaming a government that refuses to be shamed, or attempts to forge a meta-narrative in a captured media landscape, it would be far more productive to focus on booth-level work – alongside whichever progressive party in the INDIA bloc is best placed to defeat the BJP.

This requires local synergies to ensure that all progressives work in tandem towards a common goal, rather than at cross-purposes. This is not to suggest abandoning other activities, which remain important. However, if we are to comprehensively counter the seeds the BJP has sown, we must recalibrate our operational methodologies over the next three years. Failing to do so – whether out of self-promotion, attachment to familiar methods, territorial instincts, or the belief that we alone know best – would be a grave disservice to the nation. As I have had to do, we must all be prepared to unlearn and relearn in the service of India and its people.

​Pushparaj Deshpande is director, Samruddha Bharat Foundation and editor of The Great India Manthan (Penguin). 

Inputs from Jayavant Valkunje, who is an independent data analyst and political researcher.

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