Mahayuti retained its vote count in Maharashtra, but there's more to it

The Mahayuti’s vote share declined by 7.36%, as it failed to account for the increase in the number of voters from 54 million in 2019 to 57 million in 2024

Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pointed out that the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra has more or less retained its vote count despite winning just 17 of the state’s 48 seats in the Lok Sabha elections. However, going deeper into the election data tells you another story.

Mumbai, India - Sept. 1, 2023: Dy CM Ajit Pawar, CM Eknath Shinde and Dy CM Devendra Fadnavis, during "Mahayuti" alliance meeting at NSCI, Worli, in Mumbai, India, on Friday, September 1, 2023. (Photo by Anshuman Poyrekar/ Hindustan Times) (Hindustan Times)

Deputy chief minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis had said last week that the vote share of the ruling Mahayuti alliance was intact. “We have polled just two lakh votes fewer than the opposition combine. In Mumbai, in fact, the ruling alliance has polled two lakh votes more than the opposition,” he said while addressing party MLAs on Saturday.

However, the Mahayuti alliance’s vote share declined by 7.36%, as it failed to account for the increase in the number of voters from 54 million in 2019 to 57 million in 2024. At the same time, the transfer of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi’s vote share, which declined by 2.1 million, seems to have helped the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) to increase its vote share by 10.55%.

The Mahayuti, comprising BJP, the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party, and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, polled 24.8 million votes (43.52%), against the MVA’s 25 million (43.88%). In the 2019 elections, the ruling alliance – which consisted of the undivided Sena and BJP back then – had polled 27.5 million votes (50.88%), against 18 million (33.33%) of the opposition alliance comprising the Congress, the undivided NCP and the Swabhimani Paksha.

The difference in the vote share resulted in Mahayuti dropping to just 17 seats from 42 and MVA upping its tally to 31 in the recently held Lok Sabha polls. The rise of the vote share in the MVA kitty is largely because of the transfer of the VBA votes, which fell to 1.6 million (2.8%) from 3.74 million (6.92%) in 2019.

BJP, which has been the single largest party in the state in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections for the last 10 years, retained its share of 14.91 million votes. But it also contested two seats more in 2024 than in 2019, even as its vote share dropped slightly to 26.18% from 27.84%.

The undivided Shiv Sena had polled 12.59 million votes and won 18 seats in 2019, while the Shinde faction got 7.38 million votes and won seven seats. The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction polled 9.52 million votes this time. BJP contested 28 seats in 2024, compared with 25 in 2019. The Thackeray-led Sena contested 21 in 2024, down from the undivided Sena’s 23 seats in 2019.

So, what to make of Fadnavis’ comments? Mumbai-based political analyst Pratap Asbe said these arithmetical contentions help party leaders and workers keep their morale high.

“The BJP leaders claim that their vote share is intact, but ultimately the results are important. Though the votes share of the opposition alliance rose because of the shift of VBA votes, one should understand the votes polled by VBA were that of the opposition in 2019. NCP-SP sustained a loss of over 3.8 lakh votes because of the symbol similar to their symbol of a man blowing a tutari,” he said.