‘Absolve me from my govt duties’: Devendra Fadnavis takes blame for BJP’s Lok Sabha polls show in Maharashtra

While addressing the media at party headquarters after a review meeting of the BJP core committee in Mumbai, Fadnavis said, “I will urge my Central leadership to absolve me from my duties in the government and allow me to dedicate my time entirely to rebuilding and strengthening the organisation ahead of the Assembly elections. Since the Maharashtra elections were under my leadership I take full responsibility for the failure. I will certainly look into the reasons to ascertain my shortcomings”.

“I will work as per the decision and guidance of the top leadership. As far as the state government is concerned, our team [of BJP ministers] will look into all governmental aspects. Wherever required, I will certainly be there to assist and help,” he said.

The Lok Sabha election results, Fadnavis said, were way below the party’s expectations. “We have reviewed and identified the reasons and made course corrections. Although our vote share has remained intact it did not translate into seats because of greater consolidation amongst the Maha Vikas Aghadi and false narrative which effectively was not countered on issues like the threat to the Constitution,” he added.

After Fadnavis offered to quit, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said he would speak to the senior BJP leader as he attributed the Opposition’s victory to its “false narrative” about altering the Constitution.

Adding up

While conceding that the BJP failed to get its arithmetic right in the Lok Sabha elections 2024, he pointed out that the mandate was almost equal for the Maha Yuti and Maha Vikas Aghadi in terms of vote share though it translated into wide differences in seats.

Fadnavis said, “The Maha Vikas Aghadi polled 43.92 per cent and Mahayuti polled 43.60 per cent which means the vote share differences between ruling Mahayuti and MVA was just 0.5 per cent. But in terms of seats, Mahayuti got 17 seats and MVA 30 seats”. “If we reflect on actual votes, the Mahayuti got 2.48 crore votes and MVA 2.50 crore votes. There was a difference of just two lakh votes between MVA and Mahayuti. Yet, in terms of seats MVA swept by winning 30 as against Mahayuti’s 17,” he argued.

“The BJP winning only nine seats was a huge disappointment for the party. As we were hoping to do much better. In the eight seats, we lost by less than 4 per cent to our rivals. In six seats, the difference was 30,000 and in others, the vote differences were narrow 2,000 to 4,000,” he said.

According to Fadnavis, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls the BJP won 23 seats with a vote share of 27.84 per cent. In the 2024 polls, the BJP got nine seats with 26.17 per cent. “The difference in vote share between two polls is less than 1.5 per cent. Yet, the number of seats drastically dropped from previous poll 23 to present poll 9,” he admitted.

In the case of Congress, the vote share in the Lok Sabha elections 2019 was 16.41 per cent and in the 2024 poll, it went up marginally to 17 per cent, he said. Despite the 0.5 per cent increase in votes, Congress enhanced its tally from one to 13 seats, he added.

Reflecting on the overall statistics Fadnavis said, “Since our vote share is intact it will be incorrect to presume people have rejected the BJP. However, one has to admit that the MVA with 30 seats performed much better than Mahayuti’s 17”.

From onion prices to Maratha quota agitation

The Maharashtra deputy CM said their preliminary assessment of polls indicates some shortcomings which he said they failed to tackle. “In some constituencies, we had candidates seeking second/ third term. There was huge anti-incumbency against them. It cost us these seats. In the onion belt in North Maharashtra, the export ban and high duty on onions had led to unrest among farmers. We failed to apprehend the unrest and adequately negate it”.

In the Vidarbha region, he admitted the impact of global markets led to a drop in soybean and cotton prices which adversely hit farmers. “Although the state government announced the Bhavantar Yojana to allocate funds to bridge the price differences to farmers, due to the code of conduct we could not enforce the scheme. This may have upset farmers and gone against us in polls,” the deputy CM admitted.

Vidarbha has been a BJP stronghold but the party managed just two out of ten 10 seats in the region.

The lack of coordination between the BJP, Shiv Sena and NCP at the grassroots also attributed to a failure in some constituencies. “In the coming days, along with CM Eknath Shinde and deputy CM Ajit Pawar, we will relook at all these aspects and address them”.

The Maratha reservation agitation that led to sharp polarisation affected our electoral fortunes, especially in the Marathwada region. This was despite our government giving 10 per cent reservation to Marathas.

“The false narrative set by the Opposition on the threat to the Constitution struck a chord amongst the Dalits which worked to MVA’s advantage and against Mahayuti. Although we tried to explain things from the proper perspective, we failed to negate it completely,” he conceded.

The consolidation of Muslims was another issue that gave the MVA an edge, he added.

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