In 2024, Maharashtra Congress’s real challenge is to regain ground lost between 1999 and 2019

While optimism may have helped the Congress mobilise its workers, the challenges are plenty, from ensuring team work to working in perfect coordination with alliance partners led by Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar.

In 2019, when the Congress joined hands with the Shiv Sena and the NCP (both undivided), it was the smallest among the three parties and was overpowered by the allies. The Congress had literally no voice in the Maha Vikas Aghadi government thus formed. This was made public as Congress leaders went to New Delhi at least thrice to complain about the ill treatment of party MLAs by the coalition partners.

In the past one year, both the NCP and the Shiv Sena have split. Today the Sharad Pawar-led NCP is caught in a long legal battle to reassert its claim to the party name and symbol. And the Thackeray-led party had to forgo the Shiv Sena title and the bow-and-arrow symbol to the breakaway group led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde following an Election Commission decision.

These developments have given the Congress an upper hand within the Opposition alliance and the party has remained united despite differences within. It is this factor that the Congress is systematically capitalising on to regain its lost ground in the 2024 polls.

Opposition leader Vijay Waddetiwar says, “The ugly caste conflict between the Marathas and the OBCs shows the BJP’s failure. They have failed to resolve the reservation issue amicably.”

He believes the growing disillusionment in both communities would hurt the ruling BJP and its allies in the coming polls and that the people would return to the Congress fold.

Part of the Congress’s strategy to dent the BJP’s image are the criticism levelled at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. But less discussed is the steady decline in the Congress’s vote share and seats.

In the 1999 Assembly polls, the Congress won 75 seats (with 27.2 per cent votes) of the total 288 seats. Twenty years later, in 2019, the party’s seat tally came down to 44 (15.87 per cent votes)—a loss of 11.33 per cent in the vote share.

The party won 69 seats in the 2004 Assembly polls and 82 seats in the 2009 polls. But its vote share rose only slightly—from 21.06 per cent to 21.01 per cent. With the MNS also in the fray, it was the division of votes that helped the Congress enhance its tally then.

However, in 2014, when Modi at the Centre and Fadnavis in the state led the BJP’s poll campaigns, the Congress took a major beating and its tally fell to 42 seats—with a 17.95 per cent vote share. Five years later, in 2019, it showed no progress as the seat tally was 44 and vote share 15.67 per cent.

The Congress’s national initiative of forming INDIA, a bloc of parties with diverse ideologies united to keep the Modi-led BJP out of power, has not helped the party much in Maharashtra.

A former Congress minister said requesting anonymity, “Problem is the state Congress unit is not asserting itself. Even after the vertical splits in the Shiv Sena and the NCP, it is waiting for commands from Thackeray and Pawar Senior.”

“The state Congress now has the golden opportunity to chalk out its own roadmap. Being the oldest organisation, it should seize the chance to make inroads into the space vacated by the Sena and the NCP,” he added.

After the creation of Maharashtra on May 1, 1960, the Congress was the unchallenged political party in the state. In the 1962 Assembly polls it won 215 out of the 264 seats and got 51.22 per cent of the votes.

The political landscape has drastically altered over the decades with the evolution of the BJP from the Jana Sangh in 1980. Sharad Pawar, after parting ways with the Congress, floated the NCP in 1999.

In the Lok Sabha polls also, the state Congress performance declined sharply from 1999 to 2019. In the 1999 polls, the party won only 10 of the 48 seats. Its alliance partner won six, the BJP 13 and the Shiv Sena 15 seats then. In the subsequent Lok Sabha polls, in 2004, the Congress won 13, NCP 9, BJP 13 and the Shiv Sena 12 seats. The 2009 seat tally was 17 for the Congress, eight for the NCP, nine for the BJP and 11 for the Shiv Sena.

With the Modi factor at its peak, the 2014 Lok Sabha polls saw the Congress getting reduced to two seats, the NCP to four, the Shiv Sena to 18. The BJP’s score was 23 seats. The 2019 polls were no different for the Congress as it won only one Lok Sabha seat. While the NCP retained its four seats, the BJP got 23 seats and the Shiv Sena 18.