While several of its partners in the INDIA alliance barely lost any time in targeting the Congress after its debacle in the recent Assembly polls in three Hindi heartland states, the party has got a shot in the arm in Maharashtra where its Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies — the Sharad Pawar-led NCP and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) — have stepped up to stand by it. This came into sharp focus when Pawar and Uddhav immediately accepted Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s invite for an informal meeting of the INDIA bloc at his residence on December 6. This meeting was eventually deferred after some of the leading constituents of the bloc, such as West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee and Bihar CM and JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar, chose to give it a miss. Kerala CM and CPM veteran Pinarayi Vijayan went after the Congress over its virtual decimation in North India, saying the grand old party was not capable of taking on the BJP on its own steam. Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav also took a jibe at the Congress, saying its “ego has ended” following the Assembly poll results. The MVA allies have however stuck to the line that Maharashtra would be a different ball game for the BJP and that the Assembly polls and the Lok Sabha elections are two different things. Apart from the Lok Sabha elections in April-May 2024, Maharashtra is also due for the Assembly elections in October 2024. The Pawar NCP and the Uddhav Sena have however also stressed on the need for a thorough review of the Assembly poll outcome so that the INDIA grouping can learn the “right lessons” from it and do the necessary course correction if required. In his reaction to the poll results, Pawar said, "I don't think results in Assembly polls will impact INDIA bloc. At its meeting we will analyse the results in detail,” claiming that the election outcome was “expected”. Pawar’s daughter and his NCP faction’s working president, Supriya Sule, said: “The Assembly and Lok Sabha polls are altogether different. In 2018, Congress won Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls. But in 2019 Lok Sabha, BJP had the upper hand." Uddhav Sena leader Sanjay Raut said the Congress would have done better had it taken its INDIA partners along for these polls. He said his party would raise the issue of unitedly fighting not only the Lok Sabha polls but all state elections. “We should avoid votes from getting divided among our own INDIA bloc partners. We should unitedly fight elections. If we do so, there is no reason why we can’t win every state election,” he said. There are various reasons why the MVA allies have opted to stick together firmly. One, Maharashtra, which accounts for 48 Lok Sabha seats — the second highest in the country after Uttar Pradesh’s tally of 80 seats — is not considered a “done deal” for the BJP-led NDA, with the MVA still in the reckoning in this key western state. Several recent surveys are said to have not given “encouraging results” for the NDA. Two, the weakened constituents of the MVA are aware that their best best remains in their unity. Following the banner of revolt raised by Eknath Shinde, Uddhav not only lost power but also his party’s name and symbol. Many of the Sena leaders have joined the party faction led by CM Shinde. At the receiving end of the BJP and the Shinde Sena’s unrelenting attacks, Uddhav needs the larger MVA platform for enabling his party to regroup and restrategise for its revival. Similarly, the Pawar-led NCP is slugging it out with its breakaway group led by his nephew and Deputy CM Ajit Pawar before the Election Commission (EC). A large section of the NCP leaders and workers have switched to Ajit’s camp, a BJP ally, which is now projecting itself as the “real NCP”. A fragmented and weakened Congress party, which had earlier dominated Maharashtra politics for decades, had embraced its breakaway group NCP as an ally to form their government in 1999 just a year after Sharad Pawar had walked out of the grand old party to float his own outfit. Together, the two parties ruled the state till 2014. However, the Congress’s fortunes have steadily declined in the state in the Lok Sabha as well as the Assembly polls since 1999, both in terms of seats and vote share. The party is banking on the MVA not only to mount a significant challenge to the NDA in the 2024 polls but also to consolidate itself. After the splits in the Sena and the NCP, the Congress has now also emerged as the single largest party in the MVA alliance. While admitting the Congress’s debacle in the heartland states, state party president Nana Patole said, "If we look at the constituencies (of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana) along Maharashtra border, Congress has fared better there in these polls. It gives us reasons to believe we can give BJP tough time." He also claimed, “There is anger and unrest among the people against the central and state BJP leadership. It will reflect in Lok Sabha polls.” The upcoming Lok Sabha polls will test the mettle of the MVA, which has not yet started its seat-sharing negotiations. Unlike Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, politically, presents a more complex scenario, which is a different model with its multi-party coalitions in both the ruling and the Opposition camps. However, a major challenge before the MVA constituents would be to keep their flocks together, given the continued defections and switching of loyalties in their ranks. A senior Congress leader from Vidarbha region said, "The BJP offers Modi’s guarantees to woo people. But in our case we cannot even guarantee who is going to remain with us till 2024 polls." Referring to the NDA’s push for welfare schemes, he said it would be difficult for the MVA to get the better of them on this score.
