Mumbai
The Mahayuti surpassed all expectations and predictions in Maharashtra winning 230 of the 288 Assembly seats to register a landslide victory. The BJP won 132 seats on its own, its highest tally in the western State so far even as the breakaway factions of Shiv Sena of Eknath Shinde and NCP of Ajit Pawar too notched up emphatic victories winning 57 and 41 seats respectively. Their wins will go a long way in establishing them as the real Sena and NCP.
While the BJP-led NDA may have been wiped out on the tribal seats in Jharkhand, the BJP bagged 10 of the 25 ST seats in Maharashtra. Its allies, the Shiv Sena and the NCP, won six apiece taking the overall tally of the Mahayuti on tribal seats to 22. Of the remaining three seats, the Congress won two and the CPM one.
Compared to the 2019 Assembly polls, the BJP’s performance in the tribal belt improved this time around and it assumes importance given that it had a dismal showing on them just some few months ago in the Lok Sabha elections. In 2019, the BJP could win only eight ST seats which was three less than what it bagged in 2014. The then undivided Shiv Sena won three seats, the undivided NCP six, and the Congress four with the fringe players winning the remaining four seats.
While the undivided BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won all four ST Lok Sabha seats in 2019, when the BJP won three and the Sena one, post parting of ways the BJP managed to win just one of them in 2024. The Maha Vikas Aghadi won three ST seats.
The Mahayuti’s impressive performance owes to the well-coordinated campaign of its allies, no bickering in public for the Chief Minister’s post like in the case of the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Congress, which made public posturing about their claims to the CM’s chair just ahead of the polling.
In his address to BJP workers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said this was the third straight win for the NDA and no party has such margin in 50 years.
