Maharashtra: Mother of all poll battles

Although BJP registered what some experts call as the ‘freakish victory’ in Haryana assembly elections against heavy odds and predictions by pollsters, political analysts and journalists, it definitely had a salutary effect on the saffron party’s poll machinery spearheaded by Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi. The one who had almost withdrawn from the scene as the election progressed sensing trouble, was back with full fervour in the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly elections.

As is the wont neither Mr Modi nor his team let out any impression of the Haryana victory being a fluke or freakish to affect the party’s psyche. Certainly, with an eye on a more significant political battle in Maharashtra, he ensured that the BJP entered the poll fray on a high-note. So, Mr Modi went all out carpet bombing in both the poll-bound states in his inimitable style.

On the other-hand the dramatic and unexpected loss in Haryana and near rout in the Jammu region (a Congress stronghold) of Jammu and Kashmir definitely dealt a deadly blow to the grand old party’s morale. Nevertheless, buoyed by the impressive performance which the Congress-participated alliance had in the Lok Sabha elections, the party tried hard to keep the Haryana story behind their backs to start afresh in Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

All eyes are riveted on Maharashtra in particular, accounting for 48 Lok Sabha seats and being among the bigger states of the country. More so, Mumbai being the financial capital of the country, there is an added premium to winning the assembly elections.

Two fragmented alliances have taken on each other- the Congress led alliance consisting of Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) versus the BJP-led breakaway factions of Shiv Sena and NCP. The factors in favour of the former were the backdrop of stellar Lok Sabha poll performance, and more importantly the presence in their midst of the Maratha strongman, the wily politician Mr Sharad Pawar who in the real sense has acted as a glue to bind the alliance together.

The Shiv Sena and NCP factions under the BJP fold are in fact small breakaways from the parent organisations. The Sena (Shinde) led by Mr Eknath Shinde, and Uddhav Thackeray headed Shiv Sena, and NCP headed by an eternally chief minister hopeful and mercurial nephew of the octogenarian Pawar-clan patriarch, Mr Ajit Pawar. On the face of it, it was a more loosely knit political alliance which the BJP strategists had managed with the sole aim of breaking Shiv Sena and NCP in order to create confusion and weaken the opposition. However, the strategy had backfired as suggested by the Lok Sabha election outcome.

The arrangement seemed to have been worked out by the BJP to ensure decimation of Shiv Sena and NCP in their original forms and in turn weaken the opposition camp through them. However, the Lok Sabha election has created a new challenge for the BJP as Congress emerged stronger, bagging the highest number of seats among the political parties, in the rival alliances.

Who stands to benefit out of this chaos and confusion? Will the Modi-Amit Shah plan help the saffron brigade-led combine to retain power? Or will the Congress and its partners continue in the spirit of Lok Sabha elections to dethrone the BJP-led alliance?

There is a debate, which takes place every poll season, whether the states going to poll after the Lok Sabha elections continue with the same trend or it changes from election to election and from state to state. There is no clearcut hypothesis in this regard to back up a particular trend.

According to the author Mr Ruchir Sharma this trend percolates down to assembly elections if held within six months after the Lok Sabha elections. The question arises then, what happened in Haryana. In many ways, as the subsequent developments suggest, it was a freak case with certain factors such as the factionalism in the Congress helped the BJP to retain power. In elections, usually the end result and not the means matter.

Referring to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra, where the Maha Vikas Aghadi -- comprising Shiv Sena (UBT), NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) and the Congress -- won 31 out of 48 seats, he suggested that this trend might persist in the upcoming Assembly polls, asserting that his perspective was based on historical patterns rather than recent field observations.

So, will the dose of adrenaline which Mr Modi and BJP got after the narrow victory in Haryana ensure their victory in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Every state election is different from the other on account of region, religion, caste, geography and more importantly the local issues. Nevertheless, it will be out of place to outrightly reject that the trend of Lok Sabha elections does not continue in the states going to poll immediately thereafter.

After all Haryana, though freakish and still being hotly debated, was in some ways a fallout or continuation of what had happened in Lok Sabha elections. The common denominator is that in both the cases BJP won by the skin of their teeth. Still, it was a continuation of the trend.

This trend may not be reflected in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, if Mr Ruchir Sharma is to be believed. This is a possibility which cannot be ruled out.

The common factor in BJP’s tirade against its political opponents is the reiteration of corruption charges against the opponents.

Maharashtra is certainly, at present, the mother of all political battles. This is a battle to capture the country’s financial capital. A victory here for BJP would mean consolidation of their narrative and the tried and tested strategy of tarnishing the image of political opponents on way to electoral victories. A defeat will certainly raise a big question mark on the stability of both the Modi government at the Centre and the BJP-led alliance, particularly in Maharashtra.

In Jharkhand, though the BJP has used the same formula to corner chief minister Mr Hemant Soren, the election here is centred around “Tribal Asmita”. The obvious reason for this is that he was jailed by ED-CBI combine on charges of corruption and subsequently came out of jail on bail.

The efforts by the BJP poll strategists to break his Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the JMM-led alliance with Congress being a strong partner did give the desired results. A victory for JMM-Congress combine will only be a strong indicator about the mindset of Tribals, which are in majority in the state, and other major groups.