Last week, HT published an analysis of elector count in Maharashtra and other states to show that changes in the number of electors between the 2024 Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Maharashtra did not suggest anything unwarranted when compared to other states. The Congress has been attributing Maharashtra’s swing from a victory for the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and Nationalist Congress Party Sharad Pawar (NCP-SP) alliance (henceforth MVA) in the Lok Sabha to a big loss in the assembly elections held six months later to a large-scale manipulation of electoral rolls.
Having made this point, the larger question remains unanswered. What exactly led to the large victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena and the NCP alliance (henceforth Mahayuti) in the last assembly elections held in the state? We will attempt to answer this question by giving statistics which are both big picture and hyperlocal.
It is not uncommon for results to flip between national, state polls held in quick succession
Politics at the national level and states often works on very different dynamics. Maharashtra itself is a good example. The BJP and Shiv Sena alliance swept the state in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections winning 42 and 41 out of the 48 parliamentary constituencies (PCs). But things were very different in the 2014 and 2019 assembly elections which followed the Lok Sabha polls. In 2014, all four major parties contested separately, and in 2019, the BJP and Shiv Sena alliance did much worse than in the Lok Sabha elections.
Maharashtra is not the only state to show such divergence. In 19 large Indian states, with at least seven parliamentary constituencies (PCs) or more, there have been 44 pairs of Lok Sabha elections and assembly elections starting from the 2014 Lok Sabha election and ending with the 2025 Delhi state election: 19 before the 2019 Lok Sabha election, 19 before the 2024 Lok Sabha election, and six starting from and after the 2024 Lok Sabha election. In 20 of these 44 pairs, the alliance winning a majority of seats has changed between the national and state polls. In 12 of these 20 cases, the BJP and its allies lost the majority they won in the preceding Lok Sabha election.
2024 Maha elections were the most polarised assembly elections in state since 1972
The median Effective Number of Participants (ENOP) in the 2024 assembly election in Maharashtra was 2.34, the lowest this number has been since 1972 when it was just 2.17. ENOP is the reciprocal of the sum of the squares of vote shares of each candidate in a constituency and it decreases with increased concentration of votes. For example, if three candidates in an AC get 90%, 6%, and 4% votes, the ENOP for the AC will be 1.23. If the vote distribution was 34%, 33%, and 33%, the ENOP would be almost 3.
The number of ACs which had a spoiler candidate in Maharashtra in the 2024 assembly elections was 93, the lowest since 1972, when only 38 ACs had a spoiler candidate. An AC is considered to have a spoiler if the candidate finishing third polls more votes than the victory margin in the AC.
Most of the consolidation of votes seems to have happened behind the Mahayuti in the 2024 assembly elections. It increased its vote share from 42.2% polled by the BJP and Shiv Sena in the 2019 assembly elections to 48.2% polled by the BJP, Shiv Sena, and the NCP in the 2024 assembly elections (51.4% if smaller allies are included). The MVA on the other hand, by and large retained the 2019 vote share polled by Congress-NCP alliance in 2019 but saw a large fall in its seat share. This is nothing but a result of the first-past-the-post system disproportionately rewarding the winner once its vote share reaches a critical threshold, once again a well-known fact for anyone who follows Indian elections.
Maharashtra politics is best understood as national parties riding on regional ones
Maharashtra has not had a single party government since 1990. Between 1999 and 2009, the Congress allied with the NCP and the BJP with the Shiv Sena in the state. The BJP tried to challenge this arrangement by contesting on its own in 2014; as did the Congress and NCP. While the BJP ended up as the single largest party in 2014 with 122 MLAs, it was forced to forge a post-poll alliance with the Shiv Sena to form a government. In 2019, the BJP-Shiv Sena pre-poll alliance broke down despite a majority after the Shiv Sena walked away demanding that it be given the chief minister’s post. If one were to compare the seat share of BJP, Congress and the undivided NCP and Shiv Sena in the state, the national and regional parties have both maintained a seat share in the ballpark of 40%-50% each. This basic fact remains unchanged even in 2024 assembly results. What explains Mahayuti’s big victory in the 2024 assembly is primarily a flipping of fortunes between BJP and Congress (from 79-63 in Lok Sabha — drilled down to the assembly constituency level — to 132-16 in assembly) which was aided by pro-BJP factions of the NCP and Shiv Sena gaining over its pro-Congress factions (46-90 to 98-30). These numbers call for a detailed examination of the dip in fortunes of the Congress and pro-Congress factions of the Shiv Sena and NCP.
Congress’s 2024 performance marks a new low in its long-term decline in Maharashtra
Congress has been facing a long-term decline in Maharashtra, like in many other parts of the country. This can be seen in its vote share and seat share in assembly elections. Even when the Congress formed governments in Maharashtra in 1999, 2004 and 2009 its MLA count never crossed 100, something the BJP has pulled off in every assembly election since 2014 whether or not it contested in an alliance. Even in 2014, when all four major parties contested separately, Congress finished third in terms of median vote share, overall vote share, and seat share. In 2019, when it contested with the NCP, it finished fourth in terms of vote share and seat share despite contesting more ACs than the NCP. However, in no assembly election did the Congress do as badly as the one in 2024.
Loss of 9 ACs that Cong won in 2014 and 2019 but lost in 2024 can help understand its debacle
What really happened to the Congress? A good way to answer this question is to ask whether the Congress lost ground in its strongholds. Looking at ACs which the Congress won in 2014 and 2019 assembly elections but could not win in 2024 can give some insight into this. There are nine ACs which the Congress won in the 2014 and 2019 assembly elections, where the MVA also led in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but it lost in the 2024 assembly elections. They are Akkalkuwa, Teosa, Deoli, Savner, Igatpuri, Bhor, Sangamner, Latur Rural and Solapur City Central. Congress’s loss in each of these ACs underscores the importance of local factors, bad poll management , possible anti-incumbency against its MLA and better management by the BJP. Let us look at them one by one.
Congress lost the Akkalkuwa AC in 2024 because the contest became significantly more fragmented compared to 2019 thanks to the former BJP MP Heena Gavit jumping into the fray. Both Congress and Shiv Sena candidates saw their vote shares fall from 41.3% and 40.2% in the 2019 assembly election to 30.3% and 31.6% in 2024 and Heena Gavit garnered 29.1% of the vote share. To be sure, Akkalkuwa’s trend of increasing fragmentation is an exception to the overall fall in it in the state.
In Teosa AC, the Congress’s vote share of 45.4% in 2024 is the highest the party has managed since 2014. But the BJP pulled off a vote share of 49.1%, decimating fence sitters completely. The BJP fielded the candidate who contested from Shiv Sena in 2019 and polled a credible 37.9% vote share then.
In Deoli AC, the Congress’s vote share fell by less than a percentage point between 2019 and 2024. But the BJP won the seat by putting up a candidate (Rajesh Bakane) who had contested as an independent and polled more votes than the Shiv Sena candidate in the 2019 Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, suggesting better candidate selection.
In Savner AC, the Congress suffered a large vote share decline of more than 10 percentage points between the 2019 and 2024 assembly elections. The BJP gained almost all of it. But the winning BJP candidate in 2024, Ashish Deshmukh, is the son of Ranjit Deshmukh, the former Congress President of Maharashtra. Clearly, he took a part of the Congress organisation and support base with him.
Igatpuri AC has only seen a change in the party holding the seat, not the MLA. Hiraman Khoskar, who won the AC for the Congress in 2019 with a 51.7% vote share contested from the NCP in 2024 and won the seat with a 54.7% vote share.
Latur Rural AC was won by former Congress Chief Minister of Maharashtra Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son Dhiraj Vilasrao Deshmukh with a massive 67.6% vote share in 2019, significantly more than the 49.1% vote share Congress won this AC with in 2014. His vote share fell to 44.8% in 2024, which could well be a result of local anti-incumbency against a celebrity MLA who did not do much after winning. Even in the 2024 Lok Sabha Congress’s vote share in this AC had fallen much below the 2019 assembly election.
Sangamner AC saw Congress veteran Balasaheb Thorat losing after having won this AC for eight consecutive times. This seems more like a case of local anti-incumbency kicking in with a significant time lag.
Solapur City Central AC had elected Praniti Shinde, daughter of former union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, continuously between 2009 and 2019. Shinde’s vote share was just 29% and 31% in 2014 and 2019 and she won in highly fragmented contests. She was elected as the Solapur MP in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
The 2024 assembly elections seem to have seen a large-scale communal polarisation in the AC with the BJP finishing first with more than 50% vote share and the AIMIM finishing second with a 30% vote share. Congress’s candidate finished a distant third with just a vote share of just 8%.
Bhor AC is a part of the Pawar family bastion of Baramati and it is best discussed in the next section.
The palace coups within the Pawar family
When Ajit Pawar took oath as the deputy chief minister along with Devendra Fadnavis – the government resigned before facing a trust vote – in 2019, conflicting ambitions within Shard Pawar’s NCP became public. Things finally precipitated in July 2023 when Ajit Pawar split the party to join the BJP and Shiv Sena government which was formed after a split in the Shiv Sena.
The conflict within the Pawar family peaked when Ajit Pawar fielded his wife Sunetra Pawar against his cousin and Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule from Baramati in the 2024 Lok Sabha. Sule prevailed over her rival easily, her vote share remaining unchanged at around 52%. Clearly, the voters did not like the old patriarch being challenged by his nephew. Ajit Pawar repeatedly offered public apologies for having fielded his wife against his cousin after the results. The strategy seems to have worked for him in the 2024 assembly elections with the Mahayuti winning all six ACs in the Baramati parliamentary constituency compared to just one, Khadakwasala, in the Lok Sabha election. In some, NCP defeated NCP (SP) directly and in others, allies prevailed over allies. Ajit Pawar himself won Baramati AC with a comfortable 66.1% vote share in 2024, compared to just 37.6% for his wife in this AC in the Lok Sabha. The story of ACs within Baramati PC also underlines the division of power and loyalty between Sharad Pawar and his nephew in the state. The former has a much bigger national profile and emotional appeal when attacked personally (as was Supriya’s Lok Sabha election), but the latter commands a bigger loyalty among the state level leadership which is what explains the fact that he was able to walk away with a larger number of MLAs in the first place. 28 out of 41 MLAs of Ajit Pawar’s NCP have won against NCP (SP)’s candidates in the 2024 assembly elections. NCP (SP) also had the worst strike rate among the three major MVA partners.
Key takeaways
The data presented above, both macro and hyperlocal, narrate an important story about Maharashtra politics in the last decade. The BJP has used its position as the largest party in the state to attract bigger factions of the two regional parties to its fold and exploited this broad alliance to pull off a big victory. The alliance, to be sure, is far from stable. Almost every day there are reports of bickering between the BJP and its alliance partners in the state and Maharashtra’s finances are in precarious state because of the burden of the cash transfer scheme for women which was perhaps a critical factor in consolidating poor women voters behind the Mahayuti. BJP’s approach to politics in Maharashtra is in keeping with its ability to manage local contradictions which have often overwhelmed the Congress in many states. Congress’s factional problems in Madhya Pradesh — leading to loss of power in 2020 after winning 2018 polls — Rajasthan (which played a role in its 2023 loss in the state) and ongoing tussle in Karnataka are some such examples. In Maharashtra, the Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) might part ways in the forthcoming local body polls.
The BJP’s approach to politics today is best characterized by US political commentator Walter Lippmann’s take on politics which was described by a WSJ review of his biography as “In politics, there is no concluding chapter. There was only more politics”. The Congress, which instead of examining its local level miscalculations and ironing out contradictions to forge an effective alliance against the BJP is harping on an electoral rigging alibi, seems to be falling victim to German poet Bertolt Brecht’s famous satirical poem called The Solution which is worth reproducing here.
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Which stated that the people
Had squandered the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By redoubled work. Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
India’s electoral rolls are not flawless. And it will take much more data than is available in the public realm – one of these authors has endorsed the Congress’s demand that ECI provides more data to political parties – to link engineered or even inadvertent problems in voter lists to electoral outcomes. But to make this the biggest issue while turning a blind eye to effective organisational and election management is not going to help the cause of the Congress and its allies.