E-Paper
Cong-NCP fought all odds to win Maharashtra polls
A quick look at the results and trends showed that the ruling alliance made a remarkable recovery in Vidarbha after being down in the dumps in the Lok Sabha polls.
It was a tough task for the Congress-NCP alliance to romp home in Maharashtra battling all odds including a serious anti-incumbency factor, an upbeat Shiv Sena-BJP and a host of other parties including Mayawati's BSP and Samajwadi Party, out to make inroads in the key state.
A quick look at the results and trends showed that the ruling alliance made a remarkable recovery in Vidarbha after being down in the dumps in the Lok Sabha polls.
This was despite both the Congress and NCP losing vote share in the region compared to 1999 when the two parties had contested separately, soon after Sharad Pawar parted ways on the issue of Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin.
The story of 2004, was however, that despite much hype the Mayawati-led BSP could not make any inroads in the Vidarbha region, having sizable Dalit population or in any other region.
Similar was the fate of Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Jana Shakti, which had trooped in strength in Maharashtra, the second largest state after Uttar Pradesh, to hold the balance of power in a keen tussle.
The results showed that the polity got polarised in the rival Congress-NCP and Shiv Sena-BJP formations and their rebels, including independents, leaving hardly any vote share to other political parties.
In Western Maharashtra, the area of dominance of NCP and Congress, the rebels made much dent by winning some 10 seats while the tally of SS-BJP remained almost the same.
The Opposition combine failed to make further dent into any region and in fact lost their predominant position in the strongholds of Konkan and Mumbai.
This was also because the saffron combine, especially the Shiv Sena, faced a rebellion in some seats for the first time.
The only consolation was that they managed to hold on to their 1999 position in Marathwada, the region from where BJP state party chief Gopinath Munde hails from.
In North Maharashtra too, the BJP-Shiv Sena has conceded some space to Congress-NCP with the Pawar-led party winning three more seats as also slightly improving its vote share in the region.
The Opposition combine's hope to ride to power through the division of secular vote was dashed as the parties led by Mayawati, Mulayam and Paswan failed to make any headway.
The Congress-NCP's strategy to align with the RPI groups, which were their traditional alliance partners, appears to have helped the ruling alliance but not the RPI factions.
