Maharashtra and Jharkhand polls: It's virtually a do-or-die battle for INDIA Bloc

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is on a high following its remarkable and unexpected win in the recent Haryana Assembly polls and a strong poll performance in Jammu. But can the Opposition’s INDIA Bloc bounce back with the upcoming Jharkhand and Maharashtra elections?

The Election Commission, on Tuesday (October 15), announced a single-phase election for Maharashtra on November 20 and a two-phase election – on November 13 and November 20 – for Jharkhand. The results for the crucial elections, along with those for bypolls to 48 assembly seats and two Lok Sabha seats spread across the country, will be declared on November 23.

For the INDIA bloc, rattled since the Congress party’s disastrous drubbing in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir’s Jammu division, a win in either or both poll-bound states is essential to return to the buoyancy it had achieved in June, when its collective might halted the BJP’s victory march at 240 seats in Lok Sabha.

INDIA Bloc partners flexing muscles?

The Congress’s rout in Jammu and shock defeat in Haryana against the BJP have already triggered several INDIA partners, including Sharad Pawar’s faction of the NCP and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT), into expressing their unease at the Grand Old Party’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Calls for the Congress leadership to be more accommodative of INDIA allies in seat-sharing arrangements and more alert of its own electoral preparedness have been the order of the day since.

Also Read: Bad decisions, dull campaign: How Congress ‘gifted’ Jammu to BJP

Sources across the Congress’s INDIA partners in Jharkhand and Maharashtra concede that these rumblings have more to do with dissuading the Congress leadership from making “unreasonable demands” in seat-sharing negotiations than with its recent poll performances, per se. What is, however, clear is that the first hurdle the INDIA partners will need to cross in the run-up to the elections is to finalise a mutually acceptable seat-sharing formula in both states, minimising the risk of independents and rebels entering the fray, as they did in both Haryana and J&K, to spoil the alliance’s prospects.

“Negotiations in both states have been ongoing and there is a broad consensus that we should finalise the seat-sharing arrangements by October 25. What would be a bigger hurdle in both these states is not the number of seats that each ally gets to contest but whether we are able to arrive at a consensus on who gets to contest which seat specifically. In Maharashtra, for instance, there are over two dozen seats, maybe even more, on which the NCP (SP), SS (UBT) and Congress have all staked claim. Naturally the seat can only go to one party and the others will have to ensure that their leaders don’t rebel and enter the fray as independents. A similar situation can be expected in Jharkhand too,” a senior INDIA bloc leader from Maharashtra told The Federal.

MVA upbeat ahead of polls

The INDIA leaders in Maharashtra believe that their Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is poised for a “decisive win” against the ruling coalition – the Mahayuti – of the BJP, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s faction of the NCP. The MVA leaders, however, admit that the election “may not be as one-sided as the Lok Sabha election” and that the populist schemes announced by the Mahayuti government in recent months could “swing a chunk of votes, particularly of women voters getting cash transfers, MVA got in the Lok Sabha back to them”.

In the Lok Sabha polls, the INDIA bloc had won 31 of the state’s 48 Lok Sabha seats (Congress: 13, NCP-SP: 9, SS-UBT: 8 and Independent: 1) while the NDA bagged the rest (BJP: 9, SS: 7 and NCP: 1). Despite the seemingly decisive mandate in INDIA’s favour the difference in the vote share of the two blocs was miniscule with the INDIA bloc garnering 43.7 percent of the polled votes and the NDA bagging 43.5 percent.

Officially, of course, INDIA leaders maintain that their Bloc is headed for a “clean sweep” in Maharashtra and that the senior leaders of all MVA constituents will “announce the seat-sharing and our joint campaign details very soon”. Mumbai Regional Congress chief and Mumbai North Central MP Varsha Gaikwad told The Federal, “We are prepared for the elections and confident of an absolute majority for the MVA... the people of Maharashtra have made up their mind to vote out this government that was manufactured through corruption and coercion and has wreaked havoc in the state ever since it came to power.'' 

'Populist schemes may have impact'

Off record, though, MVA leaders agree that the contest could be “closer than expected”. “The Mahayuti may seem unstable because of the infighting and power dynamics within it... the BJP is uncomfortable with both Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, Ajit Pawar is also not happy within the Mahayuti especially since his wife lost Baramati (to Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule in the Lok Sabha polls) and then Devendra Fadnavis has his own interests but despite all this, their populist schemes have brought back some of the vote they lost in the Lok Sabha,” said a senior Shiv Sena UBT leader.

The Sena leader added, “We have to make sure our campaign runs smoothly without leaders bickering over seat-sharing or other issues; ideally we should declare Uddhav as our CM face before the election because he continues to enjoy a lot of goodwill among voters but whether Congress and Sharad Pawar will agree to this is the big question... there are also tricky issues on which we will have to take a stand during the campaign like Maratha reservation, policy for farmers, and so on” a senior Shiv Sena (UBT) leader said.

'Congress factionalism a worry'

While the MVA’s prospects will, eventually, be determined on the basis of the collective decision-making, camaraderie and joint campaign of its top leaders, there is also one factor that all constituents of the alliance agree needs to be addressed “at the earliest”, which is the internecine feuds within the Congress’s Maharashtra unit. “The Congress's high command has to be very stern, or we will end up with a situation like Haryana, where Bhupinder Hooda and Kumari Selja undermine each other throughout the election. We have many more camps in Maharashtra than in Haryana and the high command must make sure all these people are reined in... Sharad Pawar and Uddhav have also communicated this to our top leadership,” a senior AICC leader from Maharashtra told The Federal.

The situation in Jharkhand appears to be more complex for the INDIA partners. Unlike Maharashtra, where the MVA had performed well during the Lok Sabha polls, the INDIA Bloc’s performance in Jharkhand had been sub-par with Hemant Soren’s JMM and the Congress winning just three and two seats respectively while the BJP and its ally, AJSU, wrested the state’s remaining eight seats.

Furthermore, the JMM-Congress victories in the Lok Sabha were restricted to the five tribal reserved seats of Jharkhand, suggesting that despite the INDIA bloc’s strong social justice and caste census pitch, the OBCs and Dalits had consolidated behind the BJP in the state.

Also Read: Haryana poll results: How independents, AAP, BSP damaged Congress's chances

As reported by The Federal earlier, mapping the Lok Sabha polls as per party-wise leads in assembly segments had presented an even more worrying spectacle for the ruling alliance. The Lok Sabha results showed that while the JMM and the Congress led in just 15 and 14 assembly segments, respectively, the BJP took a lead across 46 assembly segments of the state.

Champai Soren effect?

In the months since the Lok Sabha results, the complications for the state’s ruling INDIA bloc regime have only escalated. The JMM’s decision to bring Hemant Soren back as CM after he got out of prison on bail led to the exit of an angry Champai Soren, the CM during Hemant’s incarceration and JMM’s tallest leader in the state’s tribal-dominated Kolhan region, from the party. Champai has since joined the BJP and the saffron party hopes that he would wean away a chunk of tribal votes in Kolhan from the JMM.

Additionally, there is not only palpable anti-incumbency against a majority of the JMM and Congress MLAs, many of whom expect to be re-nominated as candidates by their respective parties, but also growing communal polarisation in the state’s tribal-dominated regions because of the BJP’s strident claims of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants (read: Muslims) changing the demographic profile of Jharkhand. Neither the JMM nor the Congress have been able to effectively counter this communal pitch of the BJP with any strong rebuttal except for the perfunctory “BJP’s divisive politics” barb.

“In Jharkhand, past elections have shown that people who vote for one party in the Lok Sabha polls may not vote for it in the assembly polls. In 2019, the BJP swept the Lok Sabha polls but six months later, we came to power with an absolute majority. So we are hopeful that this trend will continue, also because we have given a pro-people government despite great odds created by the Centre. However, we also cannot discount the fact that when we came to power in 2019, it was largely on the strength of the tribal vote... we won 25 of the 28 tribal reserved seats then but this time, we may lose some because of polarisation, the Champai factor or anti-incumbency even though Hemant Soren remains a binding factor for tribals across the state,” a senior JMM minister said.

Another senior leader of the Jharkhand ruling alliance also said that the INDIA Bloc “should try to expand by bringing in more like-minded parties like Jairam Mahato’s Jharkhand Krantikari Loktantrik Morcha (JKLM), the CPI-ML and (Rajasthan-based) Bharat Adivasi Party... this will help us consolidate the tribal and OBC vote... the JKLM has surprised everyone with the way its candidates performed in the Lok Sabha election and though they may have then eaten into the BJP’s vote then, we can’t be sure that they will not damage our vote base this time; BAP is untested but we shouldn’t be taking chances... if we can’t bring them into the INDIA bloc, we should have some backchannel understanding with them to minimise any damage to our chances.”