Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray waves to supporters after the party’s victory in the Lok Sabha elections, in Mumbai.
| Photo Credit: ANI
Maharashtra played a big role in the Lok Sabha elections by upsetting the victory march of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the national level. The result marked a resurrection of the Congress in the State. But to what extent do these political upheavals change the social equations in Maharashtra? The answer prompted by the National Election Studies (NES) data is ‘only partially’.
Let’s recall that the manipulative strategies of the BJP had led to the splintering of the two main State-level political parties, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party. These strategies boomeranged for the BJP and not only created a dent in its seat tally (9 as against 23 in 2019 and 2014), but also killed its dream of becoming the new political hegemon in the State. In its meticulous planning of the electoral contests, the BJP had encouraged the two Shiv Senas to fight against each other. These contestations have resulted in a strange political consequence for the BJP.
Now, the BJP in Maharashtra is mainly an urban party in terms of its social support base. Yet it has completely lost control over the most important urban political and economic centres of the State in the Mumbai-Thane-Nashik region.
The BJP has similarly lost clout in the two comparatively backward regions of Vidarbha and Marathwada. Analysts of recent elections have suggested that the agrarian crisis (minimum support prices) and social crisis (Maratha reservations) affected the fate of the ruling coalition (Mahayuti) in these regions. However, our analysis of the NES data shows that despite its political decline, the ruling coalition has been able to retain its support among prominent social groups such as the Marathas and the Other Backward Classes. At the same time, there is an opening for the rival coalition to win sizeable support from both the Marathas and the OBCs.
The BJP still gets more support from the urban, rich, and upper caste citizens, but it has also been able to garner more than average support from tribal groups (Table 1). As per the NES data, the INDIA coalition mainly benefited from votes of the poor, Dalits, and Muslims (included in ‘others’).
Rajeshwari Deshpande teaches at Savitribai Phule Pune University and Nitin Birmal is the Lokniti state coordinator for Maharashtra
