The overall voting in the 2024 Lok Sabha election is likely to see the NDA form the government at the Centre. The BJP’s poor showing in Maharashtra has raised a serious issue in the upcoming state assembly polls.
The BJP could secure only nine of the 29 parliamentary seats of the state in this election, which was down from the 23-seat victory in the 2019 elections.. This has been a concern for the party, especially because it has to face the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections.
This is quite defying the Election Commission (EC) records, where the NDA lost in most of the patches that Narendra Modi campaigned for. The Prime Minister interacted with the public in four separate rallies and a road show in a maximum of 18 parliamentary constituencies of Maharastra, out of which the alliance has been able to secure only 3 seats.
In the highly contested Mumbai North constituency, BJP Piyush Goyal emerged victorious, with Ravindra Wai Kar winning the Mumbai North-West seat. In the Mumbai North East constituency itself, the BJP lost the seat to Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate Sanjay Dina Patil by a margin of 29,861 votes.
Like this, the Prime Minister’s campaigning in the states of Pune, Nashik, Nanded, Chandrapur, Ramtek, Wardha, Parbhani, Kolhapur, Solapur, Ahmednagar, Beed, Nandurbar, and Dindori was not very fruitful for the BJP.
NCP’s loss has been a significant blow to the Congress party, while the BJP managed to perform slightly better. Candidate Udayanraje Bhosale won in Satara with an aggregate of 4 71 435 votes against the votes of NCP (SP) candidate Shashikant Shinde. Besides, in Kalyan, this Shinde group’s seat in Shiv Sena candidate Shrikant Shinde secured more than two lakh votes against Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate Vaishali Darekar.
The BJP’s poor performance in Maharashtra has been a concern as the party plans or begins the process of going to the state polls. I believe the party will have to sit down and ponder ways and means of rebuilding that all-important trust between the electorate and the party in the state.
