Maha News | Ruling Mahayuti back to drawing table in its bid to retain power in state, MVA aims to repeat performance

The challenge before the Mahayuti is to win back voters, find a solution to the alienation of Marathas and prevent voting for the MVA by Dalits and Muslims.

After the ruling alliance's debacle and the opposition MVA coalition's impressive show in the Lok Sabha elections, the battle between rival coalitions in Maharashtra is set to intensify further as the assembly elections are expected to be held in September-October. Though the MVA won 30 out of 48 seats and leading in more than 150 assembly segments, its bid to win assembly polls is not a done deal. The rattled BJP-led alliance will try its best to retain power while the challenge before the MVA partners would be to maintain the disgruntled mood of the electorate against the ruling alliance and convince voters that they could provide a better government.

In the Lok Sabha elections, the ruling Mahayuti alliance won 17 out of 48 seats while the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won 30 seats. ((PIC FOR REPRESENTATION))

In the Lok Sabha elections, the ruling Mahayuti alliance won 17 out of 48 seats while the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won 30 seats. Independent, Vishal Patil, too announced his support to Congress. The results came as a jolt to the Mahayuti comprising BJP, chief minister Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar-led NCP. The three parties together have over 180 seats while the ruling alliance claims support of over 200 MLAs in the assembly of 288.

Still, the MVA comprising Congress, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP) and Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) won almost two-thirds of the Lok Sabha seats in the state. Though the BJP managed to retain power at the Centre, it is wary about Maharashtra where the trends in Lok Sabha elections show that MVA could win the assembly elections later this year if the current mood among the voters doesn't change.

Over the past few days, there have been a series of meetings in the ruling camp especially in the BJP as the party is determined to retain power in a crucial state like Maharashtra. Retaining power would also come as a boost to the party at the national level where it could not cross the majority mark of 272 on its own.

According to the leaders from the ruling alliance, the challenge before the Mahayuti is to win back the confidence of voters especially farmers who were not happy with the government, find a solution to the alienation of Marathas and prevent en bloc voting for the MVA by Dalits and Muslims.

It also faces the task of keeping its house united as differences have cropped up between the three partners. The Ajit Pawar-led NCP is already making its unhappiness known following voices from the Sangh Parivar that allowing the former to join its government was a bad idea.

The BJP’s national leadership is taking steps to stall the slide and has not left the decision-making to state leaders.

The first thing the party’s top leaders did was to appoint senior leaders and union ministers Bhupendra Yadav and Ashwini Vaishnav in charge of the party strategy for the assembly elections. It also decided to decentralise the local leadership structure, asking leaders from each region to focus on their areas.

The BJP has already worked out a blueprint for state assembly polls. On the other hand, the Mahayuti government is mulling several new populist measures to woo the voters – The challenge will be to work with the two alliance partners.

"The seat sharing is going to be a tricky affair for us. Both Shinde and Ajit Pawar are asking for many more seats than the number of MLAs they have. We can't accept their all demands considering the fact that we won 120 assembly seats in 2014 and 105 in 2019. However, we will have to strike the right balance considering their nuisance value if they remain unhappy," said a senior BJP leader involved in the deliberations.

On the other side of the political divide, the MVA coalition is yet to finalise its strategy for assembly elections.

"We had a preliminary meeting but the serious discussions on strategy to be adopted and seat-sharing are yet to start. All three parties will first complete their internal discussions and then begin strategising as a coalition. Our guess is that it would begin after the budget session of the state legislature which begins on June 27," said a senior Congress leader who asked not to be named.

For MVA partners, contesting the Lok Sabha election was easy since it was a question of survival and all three parties didn't have much in hand to begin with. Things however have changed now with the success of Lok Sabha. State Congress leaders like Nana Patole have already started telling the media that they are the big brother in the MVA. In Lok Sabha, Congress won 13 seats, NCP (SP) 8 and Shiv Sena (UBT) 9 seats.

The oneupmanship between the allies could become a problem if the cadre of the three parties, seen together in the Lok Sabha election, starts fighting at the local level.

"Assembly elections are difficult compared to the Lok Sabha where a constituency is quite large. Each assembly constituency would easily have at least half a dozen aspirants among the three parties which could become a hurdle in working together of the allies," said a senior NCP (SP) legislator.

The Maratha quota issue including the handling of activist Manoj Jarange-Patil's agitation hit the ruling parties badly in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls. A significant number of Marathas voted against the ruling alliance. The strong presence of the Maratha community affected Mahayuti's performance in Marathwada (central Maharashtra) as well as parts of north and western Maharashtra and benefitted the MVA.

The alliance, especially the BJP seems to have decided to consolidate the Other Backward Class (OBCs) who are angry with Jarange-Patil's demand to give benefits of reservation to Marathas from OBC quota by considering them as Kunbi, a peasant sub-caste of Maratha community that falls in the OBC category.

"The population under the OBC is more than Marathas but they are not politically active like the latter. We are trying to consolidate them," said the BJP leader quoted earlier.

Irked with the government's sympathetic approach towards the OBCs, Jarange-Patil issued a fresh warning to the government on Tuesday: "We will turn your government upside down." However, Patil’s threat to contest all 288 assembly seats in Maharashtra would split Maratha votes and could be an advantage for the ruling alliance.

Shailesh Gaikwad, political editor of HT Mumbai, breaks down the most important political news in Maharashtra this week