The keenly-watched election to the Maharashtra Legislative Council last Friday resulted in a clear win for the ruling Mahayuti alliance. The Opposition MVA would regret attaching too much significance to the poll, claiming that the outcome would cause further fissures in the ruling alliance. However, the outcome forced the MVA on the back foot, dashing hopes of further consolidation ahead of the all-important October Assembly poll. Now, it is the ruling alliance which will feel further energized, hoping to replicate its sterling success in the coming Assembly poll. After all, didn’t the Shiv Sena (UBT)-Congress-NCP (SP) bill the Council poll as a semi-final ahead of the final in October? Not only did the ruling alliance win all nine seats it contested. It received five additional votes from the MVA. Of the nine seats, five were won by the BJP, two each by the Shiv Sena (Shinde) and NCP (Ajit Pawar). The Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) won one seat each. The third candidate fielded by the Opposition, Jayant Patil of the Peasants’ and Workers’ Party, and supported by NCP (SP), was defeated. Though not much ought to be made of the outcome, but politics is all about generating “hawa”. After the poor performance of the ruling alliance in the Lok Sabha poll, with the MVA winning 31 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats, it appeared that the Mahayuti may be in trouble. And would find it difficult to regain the voters’ trust ahead of the Assembly poll. The better than expected performance of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha election, though it was considered the weakest partner in the MVA, did not make for a unifying force insofar as it became far more assertive in its dealings with the other two partners. As it happens, the five MLAs who cross-voted in the Council poll belonged to the Congress, denting the image of the party’s state leadership. In the ruling alliance, Ajit Pawar would heave a sigh of relief that the much-feared desertions from his camp had not occurred. Local media reports had suggested a big exodus of his MLAs to the rival NCP(SP). For the moment, his grip on the party remains strong. Clearly, after the Lok Sabha setback, the ruling combine has undertaken to bolster its grassroots support-base, mollycoddling various faction and caste leaders with an eye on the Assembly poll. The BJP, for instance, has sought to get back Pankaja Munde who of late was beginning to sulk for want of a significant role in the party affairs. Likewise, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde would draw comfort from the clean sweep of Mahayuti in the Council polls. The argument that after the Lok Sabha poll voters’ anger against the BJP for splitting the Shiv Sena and the NCP has been dissipated, and in the Assembly poll the ruling alliance could do much better than it did in the Lok Sabha, does not seem to be devoid of merit. Meanwhile, the grievance of the Muslim leaders that the so-called secular MVA has done injustice to them, with not a single leader from the community fielded in the Council is hard to deny. Echoing BJP, a number of Muslim leaders complained that the secular parties use the community as a vote-bank, denying them a rightful share in power. Notably, two Muslim members had recently retired from the Council ahead of the biennial poll.
Meanwhile, in a fresh round of bye-elections for the State Assemblies polling for which was held on Friday, regional parties in the INDIA alliance have fared much better. They won 10 out of the 13 seats spread across seven states. In Uttarakhand where BJP had made a clean sweep in the recent Lok Sabha poll, winning all five seats in the State, Congress won two of the three Assembly seats. BJP won the third. Congress winning the Manglaur Assembly seat was not surprising. A traditional stronghold of the party with Muslims and Dalits constituting a majority, its candidate Qazi Nizamuddin, retained the seat for the party. Also, in Himachal Pradesh where too the BJP had won all the four Lok Sabha seats, the Congress won two of the three Assembly by-elections, the third going to the BJP. Among the Congress winners was Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife, Kamlesh Thakur. The HP result will come as a shot in the arm for Sukhu who after the recent defections of Congress legislators would now try and strengthen his grip on the party. There were no surprises in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal where the ruling parties won all the by-elections held in the two States. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP retained the lone seat that was up for grabs. Significantly, in Punjab, the AAP candidate in the Jalandhar seat won with a handsome margin. The second place went to the BJP, the Congress candidate came a poor third. In the ever-changing game of parties, the AAP candidate had recently defected from the BJP while the BJP candidate was the winner on the AAP ticket in the Assembly elections last year and had defected to the BJP recently, thus necessitating the by-poll. Overall, the balance of political forces virtually remains unaltered as a result of the by-polls.
