MUMBAI: The Congress appears to be gaining in Vidarbha while the NCP has been able to keep its bastion of Western Maharashtra intact.
Vidarbha had been a bastion of BJP which took it near power in the state in 2014. It is no longer so this time around. The party had won 44 out of 62 and Congress had got only 10 last time. This time the BJP-Shiv Sena combine has won only 31 seats while the Congress-NCP alliance has bagged 23 seats. The BJP had sensed the anti-incumbency and dropped nine sitting MLAs and gave only 12 seats to the Sena.
Yet, the party couldn’t achieve big results. The eight seats that have neither gone to the BJP-SS or INC-NCP combine as yet might go to independents that are rebels from BJP or Shiv Sena. The OBC (Kunbi) class’ worries pertaining to Maratha quota is said to have been the biggest local issue that arrested the BJP’s winning chariot in the region.
In sugar belt of Western Maharashtra, that elects 58 MLAs, the primary tussle was between the BJP and the NCP and the NCP appears to have been able to keep its bastion intact. Here the floods was a major issue and the NCP had accused the BJP of ignoring the issue completely in its campaign spree.
Also, the dynamics within the Saffron alliance went against the BJP in this region due to which the party suffered a lot in Kolhapur district. Of the total 21 seats in Pune district, though some seats have chosen new candidates the BJP’s tally has come down only by 1 and NCP has gained by the same numbers.
In Konkan, Thane and Mumbai region, strategy to induct bigwigs from the NCP has helped the saffron alliance, it has bagged 56 out of 75 seats from the region.
Though Marathwada and North Maharashtra had more complexities, the results have not changed for either alliance.