Bihar election: Maharashtra’s Shiv Sena, NCP score less votes than Nota

According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the Sena polled 0.05% of the eligible votes, while Nota fetched 1.68% votes

The two regional parties from Maharashtra — the Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) — drew a blank in the Bihar elections, results for which were declared on Tuesday.

BJP women workers celebrate NDA’s victory in Bihar Assembly election at BJP office in Patna. (HT Photo)

While the Sena had fielded 22 candidates, the NCP contested 108 seats. Both the parties could not win a single seat and got below 1% votes, which is even less than the None of the Above (Nota) option.

According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the Sena polled 0.05% of the eligible votes, while Nota fetched 1.68% votes. All Sena candidates lost their deposit, a senior party functionary said.

The Sena does not have a foothold outside Maharashtra, but has been contesting the Assembly and general elections in states, including Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan etc, to increase its footprint. So far, it has not been successful.

The party gave tickets to local level functionaries and social activists with some presence in the constituency. Sena leaders said it contested polls on the development plank.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led party initially planned to contest around 50 seats in the election. Later, around 30 candidates filed nomination forms, only 22 candidates made it into the fray after scrutiny, the functionary said.

Similarly, the NCP got just 0.23% votes and did not manage to win even one seat, according to the ECI website.

“We wanted to contest the polls as partners of the grand alliance comprising Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Congress and others and were also ready to accept RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav as chief ministerial candidate. But the grand alliance wasn’t ready to leave even two seats for us, hence we opted to contest on our own,” said a senior NCP leader, privy to the development.

“We were not ready to go solo in the polls and not prepared as well. Not a single rally was held by NCP chief Sharad Pawar for the Bihar polls. Some of our candidates got 4,000 to 5,000 votes and some could not pull even 500 votes too,” he said.

In 2015 too, the party solely contested 40 seats, but failed to get one seat. The NCP has two MLAs in Kerala and one MLA in Gujarat.