Mumbai/Pune/Nagpur: Knives were out within Mahayuti after the governing coalition managed to bag only two of the five seats in the MLC elections in Maharashtra, while MVA secured three.
The wins for the opposition bloc were touted as a big turnaround after the 2024 assembly poll drubbing. Congress scored its sole win there from polls in three states, when its candidate, Abhijit Wanjarri, secured a second consecutive term and defeated BJP’s Sudhakar Kohale by 3,271 votes in a nail-biting finish that went beyond 41 hours of counting.
State cabinet minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule from BJP said senior alliance members would review the results and “track down who played spoilsport”, while party spokesperson Navnath Ban said Sena failed to uphold the alliance’s principles by refusing to cooperate with BJP and NCP. “Mahayuti, otherwise, would have won all five MLC seats,” he asserted. State BJP vice-president Keshav Upadhye said while there was a need for introspection, he blamed allies for his party’s defeat. “The results are not proof of the opposition’s success but evidence of the deeds of some ‘well-wishers’ within Mahayuti,” he posted. So, we did not campaign for him,” he said. Party chief Sunetra Pawar said, “Winning and losing are part of every election, but every outcome is a lesson. Backing party colleague Praful Patel’s call for introspection, NCP minister Chhagan Bhujbal said the results called for an “honest and rigorous self-assessment” by Mahayuti and his own party. He said educated and politically aware voters were moving away from NCP and their views could influence a wider section of the public. He said the alliance must examine where it went wrong and take corrective measures.
The biggest embarrassment for BJP was in Nagpur—CM Devendra Fadnavis ’s home turf and RSS’s citadel—where its loss seemed to be a result of an internal rift within the party. In the run-up to the polls, the Pune seats became a bone of contention in Mahayuti. BJP decided to contest both graduates and teachers constituencies despite Sena staking its claim to them. Instead of backing BJP, Sena supported rebels from its own party. In the Aurangabad graduates constituency, the two NCP factions were directly pitted against each other, but NCP got no support from Sena despite it having a strong presence in the Marathwada region. Senior Sena functionary Abdul Sattar acknowledged that he backed the NCP (SP) candidate, Pratapsinh Patil, instead of Satish Chavan from NCP, but criticised NCP for having nominated Chavan in the first place and asked the party to introspect. “In previous elections, our party workers supported the Mahayuti candidate. However, this time, the candidate selection was wrong. NCP was restrained in its response to its loss and the lack of support from allies.