The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance scored a historic win in Maharashtra, leveraging cash schemes and communal rhetoric while Congress struggled to connect with local issues. In contrast, Jharkhand reaffirmed its loyalty to the JMM, rejecting the BJP’s aggressive campaign, writes Mudit Mathur
Amid brewing controversies over Kashi and Mathura, a high-pitched campaigning aimed at igniting passions for a Hindu renaissance ensured a historic and unprecedented victory for the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance. The BJP achieved an impressive 89 percent success rate in the seats it contested. However, in Jharkhand, the BJP failed to make inroads among tribal communities despite flagship schemes launched by Prime Minister Modi. The state remains a loyal stronghold of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), which has pledged to protect tribal lands, water bodies, and forests from exploitation by corporates. Despite emerging as the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress failed to capitalise on its gains and ended up significantly diminished.
Maharashtra’s fiercely contested Assembly election centred on cash, caste, communalism, and crops. The BJP, with Mahayuti allies—Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP—leveraged cash, caste dynamics, and communal sentiments to offset agrarian distress caused by falling crop prices. Notably, the swift disbursement of welfare scheme benefits overshadowed the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s (MVA) campaign, which focused on pressing national issues. The MVA appeared to rely on the same narrative used during the Lok Sabha elections.
MVA focused its campaign highlighting deteriorating crop prices in Maharashtra’s rural areas with the state’s main crops, soyabean and cotton, selling far below the MSP, unbearable price rise of essential commodities gone up by the double-digit food inflation at 10.9 per cent that going up to 42.2 per cent for vegetables, record unemployment taking a visible toll across the state’s urban and rural belts and concentration of wealth in the hands of a favoured few corporates––Adanis and Ambanis.
Buoyed by its victory in Haryana, the BJP employed smart social engineering in Maharashtra, organising OBC communities to counter Maratha anger while leveraging communal rhetoric. Fiery slogans like “Batenge To Katenge” by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath polarised Hindu votes and consolidated a decisive swing in favour of the BJP.
The unmatched strategy of the Mahayuti alliance spearheaded at the helm by PM Narendra Modi and his Home Minister Amit Shah in Maharashtra has swept a state that is not a traditional bastion and it has also raced ahead of its allies securing the highest numbers of seats. The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance further negates the narrative set by the INDIA alliance concerning the danger to the Constitution and the threat to the abolition of reservations of SC-ST by winning back their support securing about 20 of the state’s 29 SC-reserved seats. At the same time, Congress has broadly squandered away the considerable advantage it had gained in June and failed to resonate well with the local realities due to a lack of organisational feedback mechanism.
