Can Modi repeat the Haryana poll magic in Maharashtra as well?

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s unexpected triumph in the Haryana assembly election will have two consequences. First, it will tighten Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s electoral grip over the Hindi heartland. Second, its reverberations will be felt all the way to Maharashtra, which holds assembly polls next month.After losing five out of Haryana’s 10 Lok Sabha seats to the Congress in the June general election, exit polls had projected a landslide defeat for the BJP in Haryana.The BJP was fighting a 10-year incumbency in the state. The farmers’ agitation, wrestlers’ protests, caste consolidation and the rising stock of Rahul Gandhi had seemingly tilted the electoral balance in favour of the Congress.Modi invested his political capital in the election. With a new chief minister, Nayab Singh Saini, and rumblings within the state unit, victory or defeat would lie squarely on Modi.Following the Haryana win, Modi’s stock has risen. It had been battered in 2024 by the BJP collapsing to a 240-seat minority in the Lok Sabha. Has winning Haryana against the odds revived Modi’s electoral mojo?The answer to the question lies in Maharashtra where the BJP faces an uphill electoral battle. Elections to 288 assembly seats will likely be held in mid-November, soon after Diwali. An announcement is expected shortly.The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is confident of wresting power back from the Mahayuti government. It reckons the Mahayuti troika comprising the BJP, Eknath Shinde’s rebel Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s breakaway Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) form an ideologically contradictory alliance.The Mahayuti’s humiliating loss in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the MVA believes, underscores the electorate’s disaffection with the BJP and its two rebel partners.Has the unexpected Haryana result changed the calculus in Maharashtra? It has certainly lifted the mood among the Mahayuti’s three factions. Whether it changes its hitherto declining fortunes in the November assembly election is uncertain. medium nocaptionhttps://youtu.be/lynky-emH8A?si=5L3fQUAqkNnoJYJKHowever, with Haryana giving the BJP a steroid boost, the poll math in Maharashtra could change quickly. Till recently, there was an exodus of senior BJP, NCP (Ajit Pawar faction) and Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) leaders from the Mahayuti to the MVA. Four-time BJP MLA Harshvardhan Patil who joined Sharad Pawar’s NCP is a key leader in western Maharashtra’s sugar belt.The Mahayuti has only itself to blame for losing political ground in Maharashtra. Shinde was taken aback in July 2022 when the BJP high command appointed him chief minister following Uddhav Thackeray’s resignation as CM on June 30, 2022. Shinde was expecting to be made deputy CM. Instead, Devendra Fadnavis was demoted to deputy CM.BJP workers were upset and demotivated. Fadnavis himself, after initial disappointment, took the demotion sportingly.Then came another game-changer. Ajit Pawar broke away from uncle Sharad Pawar’s NCP to join the Mahayuti government as deputy CM. The troika of Shinde, Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar often pulled in different directions.The BJP cadre was further demotivated by the arrival of NCP workers whose ideology they had fought against for decades. Now they were forced to work together.As he grew into his job as CM, Shinde began to sideline Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar. As state finance minister, Ajit Pawar opposed several of Shinde’s expensive infrastructure projects, many in his home region of Thane.Maharashtra’s fiscal position has deteriorated under the Mahayuti government even as it has completed key projects including the south-north coastal road and the partially opened underground Mumbai Metro aqua line 3.The Haryana effect?Internal surveys last month had indicated that the Mahayuti alliance could collectively end up with just 110-120 seats in the 288-seat assembly in November and lose power to the MVA, bringing back the Uddhav Thackeray-Sharad Pawar-Congress government.Can the Haryana effect tilt a tight Maharashtra election in the Mahayuti’s favour?With his new-found mojo, Modi will need to come to Maharashtra all guns blazing and address rallies across the state. He has a month to turn things around.The first priority is to lock seat sharing between the three alliance partners: 150 (BJP); 80 (Shinde Shiv Sena); 50 (Ajit Pawar NCP) and 8 (Others).To win a 145-seat majority in the 288-seat assembly and retain the government, the BJP will need to win at least 90/150 seats. Shinde will have to pitch in with 40/80 and Ajit Pawar with 20/50. That’s 150/288 — a razor-thin margin but better than 120/288 that looked likely before Haryana recharged the Mahayuti’s batteries. medium nocaptionhttps://youtu.be/dIxXSiaASMg?si=ZnWpDGT7fecebxlfApart from finalising seat sharing between the three disparate Mahayuti partners, the governing alliance will need to quickly announce candidates. A fatal flaw that sank the Mahayuti in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls was the late and faulty selection of candidates.What about issues? In Maharashtra, the Maratha agitation has petered out. A good monsoon has filled reservoirs across the state, a boon for farmers. Welfare schemes like Ladki Bahin Yojana targeting 2.5 crore women could be a tipping point.Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi has been handed a sharp reminder: do not take voters for granted. Rahul’s vitriolic criticism while addressing foreign audiences of Indian democracy and religious freedom has alienated Indians even outside the BJP’s key support base.Though the BJP won just 29 seats in Jammu and Kashmir, Modi’s several rallies in the state enabled it to record the highest vote share among all parties of 25.6%. Omar Abdullah’s National Conference won 23.4% vote share, while the Congress recorded 11.9% and Mehbooba Mufti’s People’s Democratic Party won 8.9%.With Haryana under his belt and electoral momentum revived, Modi is now Maharashtra’s X factor. He could turn what seemed a lost cause just days ago into an unexpected triumph.Read more from the author here.