In North Maharashtra, Mahayuti settles score of Lok Sabha election

Mumbai: After losing four of the six seats in north Maharashtra to the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance proved that it was just a blip in a region that has been its bastion since 2014. In the assembly elections, the Mahayuti bagged XX of the 47 seats spread across five districts–Nashik, Ahilyanagar, Jalgaon, Dhule and Nandurbar.
The result was especially devastating for the Congress, which lost many strongholds, such as Sangamner and Akkalkuwa. The grand old party’s sitting MLAs in these two constituencies, Balasaheb Thorat and KC Padavi, had been in power since 1985 and 1990, respectively.
In another important battle, state cabinet minister and senior OBC leader Chhagan Bhujbal of the Nationalist Congress Party managed to retain the Yevla constituency despite appeals from Maratha reservation activist Manoj Jarange-Patil and NCP founder Sharad Pawar to defeat him. To be sure, Bhujbal’s winning margin was more than halved from the 2019 assembly polls to 26,400.
In the 2019 polls, the BJP and the undivided Shiv Sena had won 22 of the 47 seats in north Maharashtra, while the Congress and NCP bagged 20. As campaigning for the 2024 polls began, the MVA focused on issues such as the unrest among tribal communities over reservation, unemployment, anti-incumbency, and the low prices for crops like soybean, cotton and maize. The opposition alliance was expected to put up a good fight, especially given the Lok Sabha results.
It wasn’t to be.
In Nandurbar district, the BJP maintained its tally of two, while chief minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena snatched the Akkalkuwa seat from the Congress. In Dhule, the Mahayuti won all five seats, including a significant victory in the Dhule Rural constituency, where the BJP dealt a major blow to the Patil dynasty scion, Kunal Patil, of the Congress.
In Jalgaon district, the Mahayuti swept all 11 seats. In Nashik, too, the ruling alliance did not allow any MVA candidate to win, with Ajit Pawar’s NCP bagging seven out of the 14 seats won by the Mahayuti.
To counter the MVA’s challenge, the ruling Mahayuti resorted to hardline Hindutva and the mobilisation of its traditional vote bank, the OBCs, apart from banking on the success of the Ladki Bahin welfare scheme.
It was no coincidence that Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off his Maharashtra election campaign from Dhule and Nashik earlier this month, in which he first raised the “Ek hain toh safe hain” (We’re safe if we’re united) slogan. During the last week of campaigning, social media was flooded with messages underlining the need for Hindus to be united.
Whatever the Mahayuti did, it clearly worked.