Mahayuti’s Maha win

Mumbai/Ranchi: The BJP-led Mahayuti coloured Maharashtra a vivid saffron on Saturday as it swept aside the MVA for a landslide win while the opposition INDIA bloc retained Jharkhand, voters in both states giving the parties in power an emphatic thumbs up.

Counting of votes for the two assembly elections underscored with slogans such as “katenge toh batenge” and “ek hain toh safe hai” began at 8 am, signalling very soon that it was celebration time for the BJP in Maharashtra. The party was winning or leading in 132 of the 149 seats it contested in the powerhouse state. Together with its partners Shiv Sena and NCP, the ruling Mahayuti alliance could win 228 of the 288 seats in the state, leaving the Congress-Shiv Sena(UBT)-NCP(SP) tie-up virtually decimated with just 47 seats.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the JMM-led alliance for its win in Jharkhand and thanked the people of the state for their support to the BJP. As party workers smeared colour on each other, danced to drumbeats and distributed sweets in various places, Modi was fulsome in his praise for the Maharashtra victory.

With the Mahayuti walking the road towards power in a runaway win that went ahead of what exit polls had predicted, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said, “People have rejected politics of hatred and revenge, accepted politics of welfare and development.” Describing the day as historic, the Shiv Sena leader said the “people took election in their hands to give the Mahayuti a landslide victory”. As his alliance colleagues attributed the stunning win to welfare schemes such as the Laadki Behna scheme, his son and Shiv Sena MP Shrikant Shinde said the mandate shows who is taking Balasaheb Thackeray's ideals forward. It was a pointer to the fractured legacy of the Shiv Sena founder whose son Uddhav heads the Shiv Sena (UBT). On the other side of the spectrum was Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut who alleged that there was a "big conspiracy" and something was "fishy".

Adding that there was little doubt in his mind that money was used in the polls, Raut said, "How can all MLAs of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde win? How can Ajit Pawar, whose betrayal angered Maharashtra, win?" Voters in the politically significant western state, which sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha and gave the MVA a decisive 30 seats, clearly decided to go against the trend of that parliamentary victory just five months ago.

The Maharashtra verdict -- which gives primacy to the BJP within the Mahayuti alliance -- was also the stuff of sober introspection too for the Congress and Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar once considered invincible. The three Congress big guns in the state - Nana Patole, Balasaheb Thorat and Prithiviraj Chavan - were trailing.

In the ruling Mahayuti alliance, the BJP contested 149 assembly seats, the Shiv Sena 81 seats, and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP in 59 constituencies. In the MVA combine, the Congress fielded 101 candidates, Shiv Sena(UBT) 95 and the NCP(SP) 86.