In the last 34 years, no political party in Maharashtra has been able to achieve the halfway mark of 145 seats required to form a government on its own. This means that the coalition politics trend that gained a foothold in the state in 1995 is likely to continue once the Assembly election results are declared on Saturday with either the Mahayuti or the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalitions forming the government.
After a bitter battle for 288 Assembly seats, as the final countdown begins, both three-party alliances are leaving no stone unturned to confront the political challenges that are likely to emerge from the public mandate.
While the BJP contested the highest number of seats, 148, it will have to heavily depend on its partners, the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, to cobble together the numbers. Similarly, the Congress, which has contested 101 seats, will also have to rely on the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the NCP (SP) to reach the magic mark if it gets a sizable vote.
The high voter turnout – the state recorded a polling percentage of 66.05 per cent, its highest since 1995 – has given confidence to both sides that the mandate will more or less be decisive. And both the ruling and Opposition alliance have maintained that the surge in voters will work in their favour. While Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the voting trends were a sign that a “pro-incumbency factor” was at work, state Congress chief Nana Patole maintained that the party sees a “public mandate for the MVA”.
Meanwhile, ahead of D-Day, all major parties are holding a series of meetings and reaching out to their candidates, the rebels, smaller parties and Independents who put on a good fight.
While senior Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat met NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, the Shiv Sena (UBT) chief also addressed his party office bearers and candidates cautioning them about the precautions that have to be taken during counting. Similar discussions were held within the BJP too.
“If the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) wins a good number of seats, we will join the process of government formation. We will support the parties that will form the government,” VBA president Prakash Ambedkar said. The VBA had contested the elections alone, maintaining a distance from the Congress-NCP as well as the Shiv Sena-BJP.
“Maharashtra is a complex state with stronger regional parties which have the public mandate. So, politics no longer revolves around pan-Indian Congress and BJP. Regional parties are a force to reckon with and without their support, governments cannot be formed,” Ambedkar said.
From 1960 to 2024
After the formation of Maharashtra on May 1, 1960, the first Assembly elections were held in 1962. The Congress then got a mammoth mandate of 215 seats. In the subsequent elections held in 1967, the Congress won 203 seats.
In 1978 polls, there was a split in the Congress, and the mandate was fractured with the Congress bagging 69 seats, the Indian National Congress (I) 62, and the Janata Party 99. Sharad Pawar had then walked out of the Congress government led by chief minister Vasantdada Patil to form the Indian National Congress (Socialist) with 40 rebels. They formed the Progressive Democratic Front government with the help of the Janata Party and the Peasant and Workers Party of India. At 38, Pawar became the youngest chief minister of the country. But the government was dismissed in 1980. The mid-term polls saw the Congress regaining a mandate of 186 seats and its faction INC (U) securing 47 seats. The INC (U) later merged with the main party.
On April 6, 1980, the BJP emerged as a political wing of the Jana Sangh. Though in existence since January 19, 1966, the Shiv Sena had restricted itself to local bodies politics. After 1989, it allied with the BJP and started contesting both Lok Sabha as well as Assembly polls.
The Congress’s dominance in Maharashtra politics continued from 1962 to 1990. In the 1990 Assembly elections, the party won 141 seats, followed by the Shiv Sena with 52 and the BJP with 42 seats.
The state’s political matrix changed in 1995 with the Shiv Sena (73 seats) and BJP (65 seats), along with 40 rebels, coming to power for the first time. Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi became the chief minister and BJP’s Gopinath Munde, the deputy chief minister. Reduced to 80 seats, the Congress was voted out of power.
Five years later, after Pawar parted ways with the Congress to form the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on June 10, 1999, there were two active political fronts in the state: the Congress-NCP versus the Shiv Sena-BJP.
From 1999 to 2019, Maharashtra saw uninterrupted coalition governments. The Congress-NCP ruled the state between 1999 to 2009 with the Shiv Sena-BJP in the Opposition.
In the 2014 Assembly polls, BJP emerged as the single largest party by winning 122 seats. It formed a government with the help of the Shiv Sena which won 63 seats and the BJP got its first Maharashtra chief minister in Devendra Fadnavis. The saffron coalition completed a full five-year term.
After the 2019 Assembly polls, Thackeray broke away from the BJP to join the Congress-NCP alliance and form a three-party coalition which he headed as the chief minister.
Operation Lotus, where the BJP brokered a split in the Shiv Sena, followed. In June 2022, the BJP and the Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde formed a government by dislodging the MVA. A year later, in July 2023, the NCP split into two factions after Ajit Pawar broke away from his uncle and joined the Mahayuti.
With the Mahayuti and the Maha Vikas Aghadi entrenched in their respective roles, a single-party government seems a distant reality in Maharashtra.
