The results of the assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand will be declared tomorrow. In Maharashtra, the contest is mainly between the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) comprising the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) or NCP (SP) on one side and the Mahayuti which includes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena and the NCP on the other. In Jharkhand, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) led alliance is fighting against the BJP-led alliance. Here are
Number TheoryWho will gain from the political realignment in Maharashtra?
In Maharashtra, the traditional political battle used to be between the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance and the Congress-NCP alliance. This arrangement first broke down when the Shiv Sena walked away from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) after the 2019 assembly elections because the BJP refused to give the chief minister’s post to it. While the Congress, NCP and the Shiv Sena formed an MVA government, the BJP eventually recaptured power by managing to split not just the Shiv Sena but also (subsequently) the NCP. The 2024 assembly elections are taking place in an environment where both the Congress and the BJP have allied with a faction of the NCP and the Shiv Sena. This has led to a situation where the Congress, BJP and both factions of the Shiv Sena and the NCP are contesting fewer assembly constituencies (ACs) than they or their predecessors contested in the 2019 assembly elections. This also means that prospects of government formation for both national parties – they are the largest constituents in the two alliances – will depend a lot on how the allies perform. Because both the alliances have accommodated at least one erstwhile ideological adversary – NCP for the BJP and Shiv Sena (UBT) for the Congress – the alliances are a huge leap of faith . This also leaves a window open for potential post-poll disruptions.
JMM’s dependence on allies is bigger than the BJP’s in Jharkhand
This argument holds at both the empirical and qualitative level. The JMM is only contesting 42 ACs (of the state’s 81) in these elections while the BJP has put up candidates in 68. The halfway mark in Jharkhand assembly is 41. This means that, statistically speaking, the JMM will be much more dependent on its allies. The JMM alliance has given 28 ACs to the Congress (28), seven to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and four to the Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist Liberation (CPI ML). The BJP has given 10 ACs to the All-Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU), two to the Janata Dal (United) or JD(U) and one to the Lok Janshakti Party (Ramvilas) or LJP. Another way to look at the importance of allies for the JMM in these elections is to look at the contest between ST reserved and other ACs. The JMM is contesting 75% of the 28 ST reserved ACs while it has put up candidates in just 39.6% of the remaining 53 ACs in the state. While a good performance in ST reserved ACs can get the JMM to a respectable number of seats, it will not be enough to retain power in the state. The biggest reason for the JMM alliance’s victory in the 2019 elections was that both the JMM and its allies performed reasonably well with a strike rate which was higher than the BJP’s which contested on its own.
But everyone will also be looking at the Congress-BJP contests
While the Congress managed to increase its Lok Sabha tally in the 2024 elections and the BJP’s went down below the halfway mark for the first time since 2014, there is still a very large difference between the two in terms of number of MPs and MLAs in the country. The BJP leads by a multiple of 2.4 on the former and 2.36 on the latter. The Congress’s loss to the BJP in Haryana and its poor performance in the Jammu and Kashmir elections (it mostly contested against BJP candidates) has already dented its post-Lok Sabha election enthusiasm. Both in Jharkhand and Maharashtra, the Congress did badly against the BJP in head-to-head contests in the 2019 elections. Its performance in these elections will not just matter for government formation in these two states but also setting the tone for politics beyond these elections.
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