Blame game begins after Mahayuti’s poor showing in LS polls

“We accept the poll results given by the people of the state. Instead of criticising others, we feel that it is important to introspect where we went wrong. During the seat sharing discussions and negotiations, the different kinds of surveys were the focal point. Several seats of Shiv Sena were changed citing a negative survey and hence it has damaged us. Everyone got different surveys and we were overconfident because of the survey, so we have been hit hard,” Shirsat said.

Sena leader and minister Deepak Kesarkar echoed Shirsat’s sentiments, attributing the losses to the late finalisation of seats and reliance on inaccurate surveys, which prompted unnecessary candidate changes.

“The seats should have been announced much earlier. Like two months or so… We also suffered a loss due to the changing of our seats and candidates who could have definitely won, But negative surveys were shown and because of that we changed the candidates and that in turn resulted in losses. Such wrong surveys and information hampered our performance. Otherwise we could have surely won at least 11 seats,” Kesarkar said.

Similarly, Ajit Pawar’s NCP MLC Amol Mitkari also blamed the BJP and Shinde-led Sena for their poor showing, alleging that NCP candidates did not receive the votes of BJP and Shinde Sena supporters in any of the five seats contested. Mitkari specifically mentioned that in Baramati, where Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra contested, BJP voters did not support NCP candidates. He stated that three NCP candidates were defeated due to non-transfer of votes from Shinde Sena and BJP supporters.

“We are doubtful on whether we have got the votes of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and BJP or not. We had four candidates in the fray, but only one of them has won. But due to our support, 9 candidates of BJP and 7 candidates of Shinde group won. At least in the three seats, our candidates did not get the votes of BJP and Shinde led Sena. The votes did not transfer.,” Mitkari said.