Parties are warming and gearing up for a tough and complex electoral battle in Maharashtra, which votes on November 20, where the incumbent BJP-led Mahayuti will take on the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance, consisting of Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), and Sharad Pawar’s NCP.

Both the BJP and the Congress face a big challenge in Maharashtra. In Maharashtra, which goes to polls on November 20, the BJP alliance, Mahayuti, faces an anti-incumbency factor akin to what the saffron party faced in Haryana. In the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP alliance won 17 seats while the INDIA bloc had 30 in Maharashtra. However, in terms of the vote share, both the Mahayuti and the MVA were around 43%. In Haryana, the BJP and the Congress won five seats each.

However the BJP has a far tougher task at hand in Maharashtra than it did in Haryana i.e. the BJP will definitely have to increase its vote share by at least 10% in Marathwada and Vidarbha regions for the Mahayuti to emerge victorious.

The political landscape in Maharashtra has undergone a sea change since the last Assembly polls in 2019. The two main Maharashtra-based parties — the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) — have seen a split. The Shiv Sena and NCP factions are constituents of the government coalition and also present in the Opposition alliance, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA).

The Congress has allied with the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), and they are part of the INDIA bloc. The BJP is going to the polls with the Eknath Shinde-led Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP.

While issues like the Maratha agitations, the OBC reservation demands, and discontent among soybean and sugarcane farmers may challenge the Mahayuti, the BJP’s stunning victory in Haryana, securing a record third consecutive term, offers a significant boost.

The Congress, as part of the MVA and the INDIA bloc, faces significant alliance-related challenges. The split within the Shiv Sena and the NCP has led to complicated seat-sharing negotiations and power tussles.
For example, the Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut has demanded the announcement of a CM face before the elections, which could create divisions within the alliance. However, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray has been tight-lipped about it and is waiting for Mahayuti to announce their CM face first.

Congress, on the other hand, sees itself as the senior MVA partner
and thinks that it should have the privilege of naming the chief minister candidate. However, the Congress has lost its negotiating muscle with its failure in Haryana. Its bargaining position with its allies in Maharashtra has been reduced. This internal strife and lack of cohesion within the MVA could hinder their ability to present a unified front against the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance. Meanwhile the MVA has not reached a consensus as Congress and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena are at an impasse over seat-sharing.

Although the BJP-led Mahayuti has not chosen a CM face either, Eknath Shinde is widely being considered as the chosen one.
With a month before the polls on November 20, Shinde is leaving no stone unturned to attract voters. In a series of announcements, the Eknath Shinde-led Cabinet has reportedly taken more than 150 decisions in last four meetings.

The BJP has learnt from its experiences, particularly the Lok Sabha elections, where it was criticised for not countering the opposition’s narratives effectively.
In Haryana, the BJP successfully countered the Congress’s narrative and freebies with its own targeted schemes. This approach can be replicated in Maharashtra, where the BJP-led Mahayuti can focus on highlighting the achievements of the Eknath Shinde government and the benefits of its schemes.

The Shinde government has launched a campaign to create awareness about 10 schemes of his Mahayuti government. The schemes were aimed at the youth, women, farmers and the elderly. Under the ‘Ladki Bahin Kutumb Bhet Abhiyaan’, the Shinde Sena aimed to reach out to more than one crore families in the state.

The Ladli Behen scheme is being seen as an effective tool in this regard. The Mahayuti government has announced the Diwali Bonus under the Ladli Behen scheme.
The scheme, which tasted success in Madhya Pradesh under Shivraj Singh Chouhan, covers about one lakh beneficiaries in the state. This could have some appeal among the women voters.
The Maharashtra government on Monday announced a complete toll waiver for light motor vehicles at all five toll booths in Mumbai. This is seen as a big sop for Mumbai voters.

In the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress led the campaign on “threat to the Constitution” and the INDIA bloc managed to attract Dalit votes. The narrative of “Samvidhan Khatre Me” didn’t find takers in the Haryana polls.
In Haryana, while the Congress looked at a Jat vote consolidation, the BJP benefited from a counter-consolidation of non-Jat voters, who were wooed by the various targeted schemes of the Nayab Singh Saini government. While in the Lok Sabha electiond, the Congress pitched for a pan-India caste census, the reservation in the proportion of population freaked out Jat voters. The Congress harvested the results of mixed messaging.

The ruling coalition has its campaign pitch clear, while the opposition MVA will be looking for a narrative to target the NDA. The pressure is building as time is running out with voting in Maharashtra set for November 20.

For now, the law and order situation in the state, highlighted by the murder of NCP leader Baba Siddique, is the only issue that the Opposition is using to attack the government. Though the Mahayuti seems ahead on these three factors, there are multiple complex issues that might come between the cup and the lip.

Meanwhile, till the elections, let us all keep our fingers crossed.

Article written by and Editorial credit: State Bureau Chief Himanshu Nauriyal.