Haharashtra: Fadnavis gets credit for victory. Hemant Soren’s spectacular comeback in Jharkhand
NEW DELHI : After the massive and unexpected victory of the ruling Mahayuti in the Maharashtra assembly elections, discussions have started on the name of the new Chief Minister of the state. According to sources, this time BJP is likely to get the post of Chief Minister, as the party has emerged as the largest party and is slightly behind the majority on its own. Apart from this, Devendra Fadnavis is likely to be the next Chief Minister, as he is the first choice of RSS.
The results of the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections are decided. The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance has registered a huge victory over the Congress’s Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance. Now the focus is on who will become the Chief Minister after Eknath Shinde. Speaking to reporters on Saturday evening, BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, who has held the post twice, offered some insight on the puzzling question.
He said the decision has already been taken. Alliance leaders have been directed by Union Home Minister Amit Shah that the chief minister will be chosen after consultations among all. “There will be no dispute about who will be the chief minister… It was decided from day one that after the elections, the leaders of the three parties will sit together and decide on it,” he asserted. “This decision will be acceptable to all, there is no dispute on it,” he said.
The BJP could deviate from the script and choose someone else as chief minister, a strategy it used in Madhya Pradesh last year when veteran leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan was replaced by a then unknown Mohan Yadav, despite leading the party to a big win. However, the change was made keeping in mind caste equations ahead of the April-June federal election.
Moreover, Devendra Fadnavis had said in 2019 (after a blink and miss) that he would be back to claim the seat for the third time. In any case, the response as per the party line has now been reiterated by outgoing Chief Minister Shinde, who was put in office after the 2022 Shiv Sena revolt. Mr Shinde brought over 40 Shiv Sena MLAs to the BJP fold in 2022, a move that forced undivided Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray to step down as Chief Minister and his MVA government to collapse.
The BJP has emerged as its best performer ever in the Maharashtra Assembly elections. It has emerged as the single largest party in the 288-member Assembly. The BJP also has Ajit Pawar’s NCP faction and its 40 seats. Mr Pawar is the outgoing Deputy Chief Minister and may be persuaded to retain it and support the BJP Chief Minister.
State Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday thanked voters for their mandate after emerging as the star of the show and said the win reflects that people have accepted Eknath Shinde’s party as the “real Shiv Sena” and Ajit Pawar’s camp as the “real NCP”. “People have given their mandate and accepted Eknath Shinde as the real Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar has got the legitimacy of the NCP,” Fadnavis said.
The campaign strategists-cum-managers have once again proved their mettle after leading the party to victory in Maharashtra. The BJP sees Yadav and Vaishnav as successful performers in government and as political strategists. While Yadav has been an old player as an election strategist, leading the BJP to victory in big states like Uttar Pradesh, Vaishnav has come into the limelight after securing victory in Madhya Pradesh for the party as co-in-charge. In fact, it is the same ‘hit team’ of Yadav and Vaishnav that was tasked with Madhya Pradesh last year when the party was losing ground in the state after ruling it for nearly two decades.
The results in Maharashtra are a repeat of the Madhya Pradesh win, where the NDA won more than 215 seats in Maharashtra, while the total assembly seats are 288. The win in Maharashtra is indeed a big one. Senior BJP leaders said Bhupendra Yadav and Ashwani Vaishnav will still not take credit for the victory, as the party feels that the two leaders struck a chord because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s grassroots appeal and his hit slogan ‘Ek Hain To Surakshit Hain’. But some key inputs that proved decisive for the party – like uniting the OBCs, promising loan waivers for farmers and focusing the campaign on the ‘Larki Behan Yojana’ – are said to have been carried forward by the Yadav-Vaishnav duo.
On the other hand, on the return of India alliance in Jharkhand, Chief Minister and JMM leader Hemant Soren said on Saturday that JMM has passed the test of democracy. Soren also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his good wishes on the victory in the election. India Block has won more than half the seats in Jharkhand and has further increased its lead as the counting of votes continues, giving a blow to BJP’s hopes of returning to power in the state.
In the by-elections, the Wayanad parliamentary by-election was on which the eyes of the whole country were fixed… because Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi made her electoral debut from the seat against BJP’s Navya Haridas.
