Maharashtra's crucial role

Amidst the upheaval caused by political splits and new strategic alliances, both the Congress and the BJP are vying for dominance in the state

There’s hardly any difference of opinion on this: That Maharashtra, with 48 seats of the 545 in the Lok Sabha, is going to hold the balance in government formation after June 4, the day the results of the general elections are out. Polls in Maharashtra concluded on May 20. Reports from the ground about the elections past are interesting.

In the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP-led) National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept Maharashtra, bagging 42 seats in 2014 and 41 in 2019. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held nine public meetings in the state in 2019. This year he held 17 and many roadshows. He had two night halts in the state, which is unusual in itself.

Between 2019 and 2024, abandoned by traditional allies, the BJP was forced to find new friends. It contested as an alliance partner of the undivided Shiv Sena, led by Uddhav Thackeray, in the general elections in May 2019. In October that year after the Assembly elections, Mr Thackeray dumped it and shifted to the Opposition Congress-Nationalist Congress  Party (NCP) grouping. Sharad Pawar was thought to be the architect of the breakup. Humiliated, the BJP vowed internally that it would get even with Mr Pawar. It did, when it split both the Shiv Sena and the NCP and helped install Eknath Shinde as chief minister.

“When Supriya Tai (Supriya Sule, Pawar’s daughter and member of Parliament from Baramati) says our only target is Sharad Pawar, she is quite right. Sharad Pawar broke our alliance — so we broke his,” said Sanjay Fanje, secretary to the BJP’s Vidarbha region unit, with quiet satisfaction. Ajit Pawar, Sharad’s nephew and the functional head of the NCP, also walked out of his uncle’s shadow into the BJP.

The result is an upheaval in Maharashtra politics, the reverberations of which will continue to be felt in the Assembly elections, due later this year. Many voters see the Shinde-Ajit Pawar move as betrayal. But others see it as the natural end of one era and the beginning of another. The depth of the “dharma sankat” (as one voter described it) was such that Baramati, where Ms Sule and Ajit Pawar’s wife are locked in a faceoff, saw its lowest ever voter turnout this time. Of the six Assembly segments in Baramati, two are controlled by the Congress. Four are loyal to the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP.

Sharad Pawar, however, is not giving up and is telling voters how he has been robbed. At 82, despite serious health problems, he has campaigned in every one of the 48 constituencies: Not just for the candidates of his own party but others too. People seem to attend his meetings just to see him.

In regional terms, Vidarbha-Marathwada and Western Maharashtra are reeling from a water crisis: And people want to punish somebody for their predicament. The BJP says it was the Congress government that delayed hydro projects and dams. But for several years, it was Ajit Pawar as deputy chief minister who had water as one of his portfolios. The same

Ajit Pawar is with the BJP alliance now.

The politics of agrarian commodities is a political factor on the ground. The Congress has been reminding voters that while the government lifted the ban on export of white onions (grown primarily in Gujarat) the ban on export of red onions (grown primarily in Maharashtra) continued.

That is not all. Manoj Jarange-Patil is a celebrated figure in the region. The Marathas are the dominant caste in Maharashtra, constituting nearly 35 per cent of the state’s population. Mr Jarange-Patil has been leading a movement for reservations for the Marathas. Faced with an agrarian and livelihood crisis, government jobs are the only employment solution: And the current state government has been equivocating on this promise.

Of all states, in Maharashtra Mr Modi spoke most on the issue of changes in the Constitution and pledged to never dilute reservations for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, charging the Opposition with trying to divert a part of this quota to the Muslims. Not everyone is convinced.

The Congress is expecting the Opposition front to win anything between 32 and 39 seats as a result of strategic alliances (party president Mallikarjun Kharge set the figure at 46, which even the Congress concedes is not realistic). Union Home Minister Amit Shah set the bar high at a public rally: “The people of Maharashtra gave the Bharatiya Janata Party (and its ally Shiv Sena) more than 41 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and 2019. I want more than 45 Lok Sabha seats this time.”

After Uttar Pradesh with its 80 seats, it is Maharashtra that counts the highest with 48. And winning the western front is crucial for all parties.