Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) best-ever victory in Haryana may boost the morale of party workers in Maharashtra and have an impact on its power within the Mahayuti alliance, but it is, perhaps, still a tall order for the BJP to replicate what happened in Haryana in Maharashtra.

Haryana saw its regional parties being almost wiped out with Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) failing to open its account, and the Indian National Lok Dal winning just two seats, reducing Haryana to an almost two-party state. On the other hand, when Maharashtra votes next month, regional parties, especially the two Shiv Senas and the two Nationalist Congress Parties, are likely to play a dominant role with there being six major parties in the fray.

Ten years ago, the BJP had adopted a social engineering strategy of pushing non-dominant castes in states. It started when the party picked a non-Jat face in Manohar Lal Khattar to lead the Haryana government and Devendra Fadnavis, a Brahmin, to lead Maharashtra in 2014. In Jharkhand that year, it went for non-tribal Raghubar Das. It has since corrected this strategy in a few states, replacing former Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani, a Jain, with Bhupendra Patel from the dominant Patidar community, and appointing Pushkar Singh Dhami, from the dominant Thakur community, as CM in Uttarakhand.

In Maharashtra, though the CM, Eknath Shinde from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena is a Maratha, it is the Brahmin Fadnavis that continues to be the face of the BJP in the state.

While the strategy of preferring leadership from non-dominant castes came full circle in Haryana as the non-Jat votes strongly rallied behind BJP, its impact in Maharashtra remains to be seen, especially at a time when the state’s politics is seeing a cocktail of assertion from different caste groups.

The Haryana results, political analysts say, set a certain tempo for Maharashtra polls, boosting the morale of BJP workers and tempering the Congress’s bargaining power within the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising the Congress, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar). 

Within the MVA, the Congress’s ally, Shiv Sena (UBT), has already begun flexing its muscle with Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut saying the results have come as a “tonic” for the Congress.

On the other hand, in the ruling Mahayuti alliance—which comprises the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, the BJP and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP—an adverse result for the BJP in Haryana would have increased the significance of the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena. 

“These days, everything is about perception, especially because of social media, so, the Haryana result will have some rub-off effect on Maharashtra. This time, neither Haryana nor Maharashtra were a walkover for the BJP, so the party wanted to concentrate its energy on one state and then start campaigning in another. That strategy seems to have paid off in Haryana,” Dr Sanjay Patil, a researcher at Mumbai University’s politics and civics department, told ThePrint.

In the last three elections, Haryana and Maharashtra had voted together. However, this time, the Election Commission of India (ECI) decided to hold the two polls separately.

In Haryana, the BJP won 48 of Haryana’s 90 seats, while the Congress bagged 37.

In J&K, of the 90 assembly seats, the National Conference won 42 seats, the Congress 6, while the BJP won 29 seats.

In the Lok Sabha polls this year, the BJP lost ground in both Haryana and Maharashtra.

In Haryana, the party won five of the state’s 10 seats, ceding the rest to the Congress, compared to 2019 when it swept all 10. In Maharashtra, the BJP won just nine of the 28 seats it contested this time, as against winning 23 of the 25 seats it contested in 2019.

Also read: Behind BJP’s historic 3rd term in Haryana, grassroots-level cadre, RSS support & Congress hubris

‘Sharad Pawar NCP & Sena (UBT) must be secretly relieved’

The MVA put up a solid performance in the Lok Sabha polls, winning 30 of the 48 seats in Maharashtra as against the Mahayuti’s 17. One seat went to an independent, a Congress rebel, who aligned with the MVA.

The Congress, which was decimated in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, winning just one seat, resurged to be Maharashtra’s single-largest party with 13 seats, giving it some heft to flex its muscle during internal seat sharing talks within the MVA.

Dr Patil said, “The Sharad Pawar-led NCP and the Shiv Sena (UBT) must be secretly relieved with the Haryana and J&K verdict. On the back of its Lok Sabha numbers, the Congress was trying to extract as much as it could during the MVA’s seat-sharing talks. Today’s results will help its allies counter the Congress’s confidence.”

Congress leaders have also been warring with the Shiv Sena (UBT) over the CM face of the MVA. During the first government of the MVA from November 2019 to June 2022, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray was CM. While the Shiv Sena (UBT) has been insisting on freezing on a CM face going into polls, the Congress has been pushing for an understanding where the party that gets the maximum seats stakes claim on the position, multiple sources have told ThePrint.

Reacting to Tuesday’s results, Shiv Sena (UBT) Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut, who has been part of the MVA’s seat-sharing meetings, expressed confidence that the MVA will form the government in Maharashtra, but renewed his party’s demand to have a CM face going into elections.

Earlier in the day, Uddhav Thackeray, speaking at a party function, called for the Congress to declare their potential CM face, saying he will immediately back the name. While Thackeray said this while trying to show his party is not after power, Raut said, “There should be no confusion in people’s minds about who their leadership is going to be in the future. The Shiv Sena’s stand is that we should have a CM face and I don’t think there is anything wrong in it.”

He also taunted the Congress saying, only its high command in Delhi can discuss the names of potential Congress CMs, while for parties like Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP, “the high command is in Mumbai and the decision can be taken here.”

Congress President Nana Patole told reporters that the MVA will go forward unitedly, and there needs to be more focus on what’s happening within the Mahayuti.

“Eknath Shinde’s work is done now. Amit Shah has himself said. See what’s happening in Mahayuti, we are all going forward together at MVA,” he said.

BJP’s position within Mahayuti

When the BJP formed the government with the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in 2022, the party projected a clear upper hand, giving up the post of the CM despite having more than double the number of MLAs compared to the Shinde-led Sena. At that time, Shinde’s rivals had also painted him as the BJP’s rubber stamp.

Over two years down the line, CM Shinde has dispelled that image about him. He extracted 15 of Maharashtra’s 48 seats for his party to contest and won seven of them, scoring a better strike rate than the BJP.

In the run up to the state assembly polls, there has also been an ongoing credit war between the leaders of the three Mahayuti parties—the BJP, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP—over the multiple populist schemes that the state government has rolled out in the past three months. Shinde has been at the forefront of this war.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the Mahayuti’s campaign with a mega rally at Thane, further bolstering Shinde’s position within the Mahayuti, and gave a glimpse of how the BJP is far from confident of pulling through by itself this election. While the Haryana result doesn’t change that, it will help the BJP in keeping Eknath Shinde’s confidence and bargaining power in check.

Speaking to ThePrint, political analyst Hemant Desai said, “Seat allocation within the Mahayuti is still pending. The victory in Haryana despite anti-incumbency and an unfavourable Lok Sabha result gives more space for the BJP to dominate. It will boost the morale of the BJP cadre in the state and pull some of the focus that has been on Eknath Shinde for the past two to three months back to itself.”

A BJP leader who wished to not be named told ThePrint the party is not threatened by Shinde, but realises that it took the Lok Sabha elections a bit too lightly.

“Our cadres were overconfident. It was thought that there would be a wave like last time. After the Lok Sabha results, the leadership paid special attention in Haryana, and is doing so in Maharashtra, too, at a micro level. The Haryana result gives confidence to our workers that these efforts can bear fruit in Maharashtra too.”

He added, so far Union Minister Amit Shah has visited Maharashtra three times and taken six meetings of party workers across the state’s six geographical divisions.

(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)

Also read: Joy to bitterness in 4 months. How Congress crashed in Haryana after cruising post LS poll results