After vertical splits in the Shiv Sena and the NCP, the BJP-led NDA in Maharashtra now has 185 MLAs. The Bharatiya Janata Party has 105 MLAs, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has 40, and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party camp avowedly has 40 as well.
Now the big question is, can it solve the BJP’s arithmetic for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections likely in April-May 2024?
The BJP and the undivided Shiv Sena fought the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in an alliance, winning 41 seats out of the 48 in the state. The BJP won 23 and the Shiv Sena 18. They fought the next assembly elections in October 2019 in a coalition as well, bagging 161 seats. The BJP netted 105 seats with a 25.75% vote share. The Shiv Sena was the second-largest party with 56 seats and a 16.41% vote share. It was 16 more than the majority mark in the 288-member Maharashtra assembly. Following the poll results, the parties parted ways over a power-sharing disagreement.
The BJP did try to take power with Ajit Pawar’s rebellion in the NCP in November 2019. But the government could survive just for three days as other NCP MLAs decided not to support Ajit Pawar then.
Later, the Shiv Sena allied with the Congress and the NCP to form a government in the state with Uddhav Thackeray as the chief minister. The alliance called Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) had 154 seats and a 48.99% vote share. Ajit Pawar returned to the NCP fold and was made deputy chief minister.
It looked like a formidable political alliance that could have made the BJP’s political journey ahead in Maharashtra difficult. With three other big parties and their vote bank together, the BJP was looking at the possibility of getting its gains in the state’s politics, of being the largest party in the Lok Sabha polls and assembly polls, being dented. The Congress-NCP alliance had ruled the state for three consecutive terms, from 1999 to 2014, and could still have been a poll behemoth. The addition of the Shiv Sena, a party strong in the Mumbai-Konkan region and a former BJP ally, looked like an added advantage to push more voters to its side.
The year 2022 gave the BJP a way out of this political crisis with the Shiv Sena rebellion. The MVA government came down in June last year after a revolt by 40 Shiv Sena MLAs under Eknath Shinde on the issue of Hindutva and an inclination to align with the BJP. The BJP and Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) camp formed the government in July 2022.
SHIV SENA SPLIT WAS BJP’S FIRST MAJOR SUCCESS
With the Shiv Sena being a core Hindutva party, the rebelling MLAs were not comfortable with the MVA’s ideology and political style. “Secular” politics is central to the Congress and NCP, which the Shiv Sena had asked to be removed from the Indian Constitution in the past. The rebelling MLAs decided to align with the BJP to form the government. Shinde was chosen as the chief minister.
The Shiv Sena was split into two, with the rebel faction given the party name and the election symbol later by the Election Commission. Theoretically, with this coalition, the BJP was again back at the top with a 42.16% vote share, though with 16 fewer seats than the 2019 tally, at 145. The alliance government got support from others, winning the trust vote with a tally of 164.
