While Scripting End of Regional Opposition, Did Fadnavis Sabotage His Own Plot?

Not getting votes of allies, flawed strategy with Marathas: 6 reasons behind Fadnavis & BJP's Maharashtra debacle.

Maharashtra Lok Sabha results

(Photo: PTI/altered by The Quint)

First ever Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister of Maharashtra, first CM to complete a full five-year term in decades, won a second consecutive term in 2019 before losing it in a few weeks, now a joint deputy CM and cut down to size by both the voters and his own party — this is the overall trajectory of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis.

From chants of 'Me Punha Yein' (I shall return) to now offering to resign following the party's embarrassing defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, Fadnavis may now be facing the roughest patch of his political career in the past decade.

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis addresses a press conference at the BJP office, in Mumbai, Wednesday, June 5, 2024.

(Photo: PTI)

With the political instability in Maharashtra in the past five years and the split of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party, the BJP has been the largest and the most stable party, in terms of both political and organisational strength.

But the results of the Lok Sabha elections were more than disappointing for the BJP in the state, with the support for Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar and the Congress being severely underestimated by pollsters and political analysts alike.

So, what led to Fadnavis' downfall? Here are some of his political blunders that largely led to the NDA's rout in Maharashtra:

'BJP Wants to Destroy Allies': BJP Corroborated MVA's Messaging

Fadnavis is considered to be the brain behind breaking two biggest parties of Maharashtra — the Shiv Sena and the NCP.

Both Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar drove the narrative that the BJP and Fadnavis are here to destroy its allies. What was merely a political message at the beginning only proved right when the seat-sharing formula was finalised.

The breakaway factions led by Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar were identified as the 'real Shiv Sena' and 'real NCP' both by the Election Commission and the Assembly Speaker.

Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray meets supporters, in Mumbai, Wednesday, June 5, 2024.

(Photo: PTI)

But the 'real' NCP and Shiv Sena that contested 18 and 22 seats respectively in 2019 settled for just contesting four and 15 seats in 2024. Meanwhile, the BJP took a lion's share of 27 seats citing 'winnability'.

The BJP's strike rate is wining 33% of the seats that it contested, even lower than Shinde's. The combined vote share of the three MVA parties is close to 44%, while the combined vote share of the NDA is 42.73%.

For the Opposition, the political message only got stronger with both Thackeray and Pawar's parties successfully driving the narrative that under their leadership, the parties didn't have to 'beg before Delhi' for seats.

Traditional NCP Votes Failed to Transfer to the BJP

The BJP and the united NCP were in a direct battle in 8 seats in 2019 - Bhandara Gondia, Dindori, Mumbai North East, Baramati, Ahmednagar, Beed, and Madha.

The BJP won 7 of these 8 seats in 2019. This time, the INDIA bloc won seven of these seats — Sharad Pawar's NCP won 5, one was bagged by Sena (UBT), and one by the Congress.

Clearly, the traditional votes of NCP, as Fadnavis would have hoped while forging the alliance with Ajit Pawar, did not get transferred to the BJP.

NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) chief Sharad Pawar and party leader Jayant Patil address the media, in Mumbai, Thursday, 6 June, 2024.

(Photo: PTI)

Meanwhile, out of the 13 seats that the Congress won in the state, the party wrestled back 9 seats it had lost to the BJP in 2014 and 2019.

Strategy of Handling Maratha Reservation Issue Failed

Anybody in Marathwada will tell you that attempting to demonise Maratha reservation activist activist Manoj Jarange Patil is a bad idea. The BJP-led NDA did exactly that.

In the five-decade long demand of reservation by the Marathas, the community has rarely been as united as it is under Jarange's leadership for the past one year.

Out of the 8 seats in Marathwada, the NDA in 2024 has won just one seat, a massive downfall from the six it won in 2019, with even a heavyweight like Pankaja Munde losing in Beed.

In the five-decade long demand of reservation by the Marathas, the community has rarely been as united as it is under Manoj Jarange's leadership for the past one year.

(Photo: Facebook/Manoj Jarange Patil)

Across Marathwada, two perceptions were deeply entrenched in the minds of Marathas:

• The BJP and Devendra Fadnavis are 'anti Maratha'

• Jarange is being targeted because he is the hero of the common Marathas

Most in the community who are staunch on the reservation demand felt 'cheated' as tey claimed that they were promised reservation under the OBC category but given a separate 10% reservation that does not match OBC standards.

They also believe that the lathi-charge on Jarage and his supporters in September last year, that amplified the Maratha protests, was Fadnavis' doing. Also, the comunity's key demand of withdrawing cases against protesters was not met.

Moreover, forming an SIT against Jarange to implicate him in alleged political conspiracy and unlawful funding during the protests only added fuel to the fire.

Local Issues in Vidarbha Sidelined

A bastion of the BJP for the past decade, the party along with a united Sena won 9 of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in Vidarbha in 2019.

This time, the INDIA alliance won 7 of the 10 seats — the Congress resurged with 5 seats, Sena (UBT) bagged one, and one seat was bagged by Sharad Pawar's NCPSP.

The anger of the OBC community over the reservation tiff with Marathas, coupled with grave agrarian distress, led to the rout of the BJP and the return of the Congress in the Vidarbha region.

According to experts, the consolidation of votes of OBCs, Muslims, Adivasis, and Dalits, who comprise a significant chunk of Vidarbha's population, may have damaged the NDA and benefitted the Congress voted against the BJP.

Kunbis, a dominant sub-caste of the Maratha community that enjoys reservation under the OBC category was also believed to have been irked with the ruling Mahayuti, with the way the OBC vs Maratha issue was handled amid Jarange's demand of reservation for all Marathas under the OBC category.

Adding to the ire was the NDA's failure to resolve the agrarian distress, drought, and falling prices of key crops like cotton and soyabean.

Despite such grave local issues, the elections in Vidarbha being largely contested in the name of PM Modi is being seen a strategy blunder by many.

Meanwhile, several local units of the BJP were reportedly riddled with infighting. In Amravati sidelining local leaders to give candidature to Hindutva hardliner Navneet Rana, who won as an independent candidate in 2019, also did not pay off.

Even a BJP heavyweight like Sudhir Mungantiwar could not manage to win Chnadrapur with Congress' Pratibha Dhanorkar riding high on sympathy wave after the demise of her husband and former MP Suresh Dhanorkar last year. Moreover, the BJP lost all three constituencies in Vidarbha where PM Modi had campaigned ahead of the elections.

Eknath Shinde's Failure to Woo Mumbai

In a direct Sena vs Sena fight in 11 seats, both Senas are equally strong, more or less. But the Fadnavis-led NDA might have miscalculated the mood on the ground in the capital city of Mumbai.

A combined Shiv Sena and BJP in 2019 won all six Lok Sabha seats in Mumbai. This time, heavyweight Piyush Goyal won one seat while a second one was bagged but Shinde's Sena by merely 48 votes.

Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena not only won three seats, but the Congress also reopened its account after a decade with Mumbai unit chief Varsha Gaikwad winning the Mumbai North West seat.

Mahavikas Aghadi candidates from South Mumbai and South Central Mumbai Arvind Sawant and Anil Desai celebrates their win in Lok Sabha polls, outside a counting centre, in Mumbai, Tuesday, 4 June, 2024.

(Photo: PTI)

People Voted On Local Issues, BJP Failed to Understand Diminished Modi Charm

What the results indicate that though the vote share of the BJP has dropped by less than 1% compared to 2019, the local issues of the state were too grave for the elections to be contested in PM Modi's name.

Issues like Maratha reservation, agrarian distress, and unemployment were pitched by several pollsters as some of the key issues on the ground.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets supporters upon their arrival for a meeting at the party headquarters as the party leads in the Lok Sabha elections amid the counting of votes, in New Delhi, Tuesday, June 4, 2024.

(Photo: PTI)

Fadnavis has taken responsibility of the defeat and offered to resign, a demand that is perceived to be mere symbolism and is unlikely to be accepted. But more than anything, Fadnavis has clearly failed to deliver in a state that was a prestige battle for the BJP nationally and for PM Modi.

With this verdict, what further compromises his position within the state is the upcoming Assembly elections in September. With a low strike rate, the BJP's claim of winnability and forcing allies to settle for lesser seats won't stick. Even though CM Shinde has claimed that the defeat is a responsibility of all allies, his position as one of the tallest leaders of the alliance is clearly compromised and only gives more bargaining power to Shinde and Ajit Pawar, if the latter decides to stay with the NDA after an embarrassing defeat.