Exit polls indicate that the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies may have the edge in both Maharashtra and Jharkhand. In the 288-member Maharashtra assembly, 145 is the majority mark, while it is 41 in the 81-member Jharkhand assembly
The results of the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly polls will be announced on Saturday, bringing the curtains down on the chock-a-block election year of 2024. The outcome of bypolls held across 46 assembly constituencies and two parliamentary seats in 13 states will also be of interest.
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Exit polls indicate that the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies may have the edge in both Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
In the 288-member Maharashtra assembly, 145 is the majority mark, while it is 41 in the 81-member Jharkhand assembly.
The results will likely impact the winter session of Parliament that begins on Monday, with the Narendra Modi government looking to push 16 bills, including a contentious one to amend the Waqf law, and the opposition set to raise a host of issues such as the Manipur unrest, price rise, and caste concerns.
After a hard-fought victory in the April-June Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party regained momentum in October as it won the Haryana elections, where pollsters had predicted an easy victory for the opposition Congress.
The Congress won a consolation victory in alliance with the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir where elections were held after a 10-year gap.
The polls in Jharkhand were held in two phases, on November 13, and then on November 20 along with Maharashtra, which voted in a single round.
Maharashtra
The elections in Maharashtra are a make-or-break for both the ruling Mahayuti alliance and the opposition bloc Maha Vikas Aghadi, with the last five years witnessing significant political realignments in the state as regional behemoths Shiv Sena and NCP saw splits.
The Eknath Shinde government’s Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, aimed at carving out a women’s constituency to bolster the ruling alliance’s electoral prospects, is expected to be a key factor aside from issues like Maratha reservations, price rise, jobs, and the BJP’s Hindutva push.
In the 2019 Maharashtra assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the (then undivided) Shiv Sena dominated, winning 161 of 288 seats. However, the alliance fell apart over the sharing of power, and the Sena joined hands with the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress to form the government.
But, in 2023, rebellions by Sena’s Eknath Shinde, who is now Maharashtra chief minister, and NCP’s Ajit Pawar, now his deputy, forced then CM Uddhav Thackeray to step down and his coalition Maha Vikas Aghadi government to collapse.
While the April-June general elections this year saw Narendra Modi become a three-time Prime Minister, the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra won just 17 of the 48 parliamentary seats, falling behind the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi, comprising the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), and NCP (SP).
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Jharkhand
The BJP and its allies are trying to wrest power from the JMM-Congress-RJD combine in tribal-dominated Jharkhand.
In the 2019 assembly elections, chief minister Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, won 47 of the state’s 82 seats.
Earlier this year, Hemant Soren resigned as CM ahead of his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate on corruption charges. He was briefly replaced by Champai Soren, a veteran politician and close aide of party patriarch Shibu Soren. But after Hemant returned to the CM’s chair following his release on bail, Champai rebelled and later quit to join the BJP.
The JMM tried to spur Adivasi anger by pointing to Hemant Soren’s “unjust arrest”. The BJP, on the other hand, mounted a campaign that the JMM-led government allowed “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh to settle in the state’s Santhal Pargana, a tribal-dominated region.
In the April-June Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won eight seats in the state with a 44.6% vote share, and its ally AJSU won one seat with a 2.62% vote share. The INDIA bloc combined won just five seats—three by the JMM and two by the Congress, with vote shares of 14.6% and 19.19%, respectively.
