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'The people preferred Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar...'
The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA), the Congress-Shiv Sena (Uddhav)-Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) combine, made huge gains in Maharashtra, especially in the Vidarbha and Western Maharashtra regions.
The crowning glory has been the Baramati seat, won by Sharad Pawar's daughter Supriya amid a challenge posed by her cousin Ajit Pawar, whose wife contested the election.
Baramati saw the lowest turnout of all the seats in Maharashtra.
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge had said the MVA would win 46 of the 48 seats in the state. Other MVA leaders were more cautious, giving between 36 and 38 to the alliance.
The final tally placed the two rival alliances -- the other one called the Mahayuti and comprising the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the breakaway faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) -- at 30 for the MVA and 17 for the Mahayuti. A Congress rebel won the Sangli seat, contesting as an Independent.
That is a little less than what the alliance expected but nevertheless a big improvement after the setbacks the MVA received by way of defections and splits.
There are many feathers in the MVA cap: Its victories in the Mumbai seats, for instance. Mumbai South Central was won by Anil Desai of the Uddhav Thackeray group of the Sena against heavy odds.
This group also won the Mumbai North East seat, with only Mumbai North going to the BJP's Piyush Goyal.
Ravindra Waikar of the Eknath Shinde Shiv Sena faction won from the Mumbai North West constituency, defeating Shiv Sena (Uddhav) candidate Amol Kirtikar by just 48 votes.
Even a well-known face like Ujwal Nikam lost to the Congress' Varsha Gaikwad in Mumbai North Central.
Further afield, in Vidarbha top state-level leaders like Sudhir Mungantiwar, minister in the Maharashtra government, lost to the Congress, which had held the Chandrapur seat in 2019 as the sole seat it won.
Speaking to Business Standard from Nagpur, Congress leader and party General Secretary Anees Ahmad said: "I am confident we can repeat this result in the assembly elections."
In 2019, the Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) won one seat in Aurangabad. This time, although it put up candidates, it could not win even one.
Outgoing Union minister Ramdas Athawale of the BJP alliance partner Republican Party of India told Business Standard: "We have to accept the results. We expected that the people would vote for us because of the work PM Modi has done ...
"The reason for fewer seats in Maharashtra is that the Shiv Sena and NCP were split and the people preferred Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar... This may have also affected the other states," Athawale said.
"The people thought that the BJP split them but that is not true, they came to the BJP on their own," Athawale added.
In the assembly elections, the MVA faces the challenge of consolidating its gains while the Mahayuti will fight for the turf it currently holds.
For instance, Vijay Jawandhia, political analyst in Vidarbha and a prominent farmer leader, said in Vidarbha farmer suicide was the foremost issue but although the Mahayuti tried to focus on this, the appeal was more caste-based.
In western Maharashtra, the challenge is caste-based and largely on the issue of affirmative action.
The region is in the grip of a movement for reservations for Marathas and this will revive as the assembly polls draw nearer.
Although no top leader from the state BJP has reacted to the Maharashtra election results so far, former Union minister Prakash Javadekar sought to rationalise the setback on the grounds that after the Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray "betrayed" the public mandate by crossing over to the MVA, the BJP and other partners in the Mahayuti had to work "harder" to regain lost ground.
Top MVA leaders exude confidence and optimism on their prospects in the assembly elections.
Former chief Minister and Congressman Prithviraj Chavan said: "The Lok Sabha victory will propel us to similar seamless teamwork in the assembly elections as well."
The Mahayuti leaders did not want to be quoted, but admitted that things had gone badly wrong with them and they would "introspect on the reasons" to prevent a similar outcome in the assembly elections.
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com
