Can Haryana Assembly Results Shape The Maharashtra Polls Outcome?

Ahead of the assembly elections in Maharashtra, much like in Haryana, the major issues and narrative that can impact the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the ruling Mahayuti alliance are: a dominant community supposedly miffed with the party's government (the Marathas), rural discontent, unemployment, consolidation of SC/STs and minorities behind Congress/VBA/AIMIM, and anti-incumbency against sitting MLAs.

If that's the case, can the Haryana election results influence the upcoming Maharashtra elections? If yes, to what extent? If not, why not?

We discussed this in great detail with Rohit Pathania and Krishna Dange on the What This Means podcast, which you can listen to here on Spotify or here on the app.

Here are the key highlights from the conversation.

1. A Big Dent On Congress Morale

The Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in Haryana has dented the morale of the Maha Vikas Aghadi's cadre in Maharashtra. 

In terms of how it has affected Congress, we can see, for example, in the case of the ticket distribution in Haryana, it was all largely a Bhupinder Singh Hooda show. This created a picture that Rahul Gandhi on one side is going out and talking about social justice, etc., but when it comes to ticket distribution, Congress's own woman Dalit leader (Kumari Selja) is not being given the due importance.

There is a similar situation developing here in Maharashtra as well within the Congress state unit.

• There is one large Maratha faction within the Congress. And most of the Congress chiefs in Maharashtra have always been from the Maratha community. Also, if we look at the list of chief ministers until now, it has largely been a Maratha affair. The Marathas are a dominant caste, and not just dominant in terms of the socio-political arithmetic here, but also in terms of their numbers. They account for nearly 30 to 34 per cent when it comes to the state's population.

• So they have a Dalit leader, Varsha Gaikwad, who has been consistently airing her grievances that Nana Patole, Balasaheb Thorat, and others are not giving her the due importance she deserves. This she had said publicly during the Lok Sabha elections as well. Now also, she keeps going to the Delhi Congress headquarters and keeps conveying the grievances.

Maharashtra Congress is no different from Haryana Congress in this sense. It is a divided house, and with the Congress taking a big blow in Haryana, their morale has taken a big dent in Maharashtra.

2. However, A Similar 'Jats-Non Jats' Narrative Cannot Work In Maharashtra With Respect To Marathas

Though like the Jat community in Haryana, the Marathas are the dominant caste group in Maharashtra, they make for a larger proportion of the state's population (30-34 per cent of the state's population). And it is only the Marathas in the central Maharashtra region, which is known as Marathwada, who expressed the anti-Mahayuti sentiment and voted against it in the 2024 Lok Sabha.

In the Vidhan Sabha too, the Maratha agitation and its influence will be limited to this region.

Additionally, the anti-Mahayuti tone of this group of the Marathas has itself come down a bit. The Ladki Bahin Yojana is helping the government to change the direction of the wind, but a few more additional efforts are needed from the Mahayuti leaders to ensure that the repeat of 2024 Lok Sabha doesn't happen.

• If we look at the Marathas in the coastal region, Konkan, they have always been favouring the Mahayuti, and did so the during the Lok Sabha elections as well. The Maratha reservation question wasn't that dominant a factor on the Konkan side.

• When it comes to Western Maharashtra, they are least bothered about the Maratha reservation because that is a relatively affluent region with a good level of education and quality of life.

The Mahayuti must be particularly cautious in Marathwada and Vidarbha. While Marathwada has been a trouble spot, Vidarbha—once considered a BJP stronghold—saw a poor performance in the recent Lok Sabha elections. The alliance just won Nagpur and Akola — only two out of the nine to 10 seats that are in Vidarbha.

3. The SC/STs And The Minority Votes

Out of the 13-14 per cent of Scheduled Castes votes in Maharashtra, at least 2 per cent are Hindus and used to vote for the BJP, and the others are largely the neo-Buddhists.

The Opposition's narrative that a BJP victory would lead to the scrapping of reservations or changes to the constitution, which is said to have hurt the BJP in northern states during the Lok Sabha elections, doesn't hold as much weight in Maharashtra. SCs generally don't vote for the Mahayuti in any case.

When it comes to their voting behaviour, they usually go for whichever party Prakash Ambedkar is leading. So previously, Ambedkar used to lead the Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh, and now he has renamed it as Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA). So either they vote for that party's candidate, or if they feel that VBA's candidate is weak and the Congress candidate is stronger, they vote for the Congress candidate. So that is how the SC voting behaviour has been in Maharashtra when it comes to Lok Sabha elections.

Now, when it comes to Vidhan Sabha elections, they might also consider voting for NCP Sharad Pawar. Because when it comes to the MVA or the previous INC and NCP's alliance, their election strategy always revolved around three M's -- Maratha, Mahar, and Muslim.

The Maratha votes are always bound to be split. The Congress and the NCP were always acutely aware of it. The only other two 'Ms' that used to vote en-block in their favour were the Muslims and the Mahar communities. Mahar community is the largest among all the SCs in the state.

• In the coming Vidhan Sabha elections, looking at how they have been voting, SC voters' first choice would either be VBA or, if the VBA candidate is weak, then MVA's Congress/NCP Sharad Pawar candidate. But if MVA has fielded Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate, then they would be cautious. 

When it comes to the Muslim community, the choices will be largely similar. The only thing is that they have a bit of clarity.

• They don't vote for Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi.

• They will definitely consider voting if there is a Congress or NCPSP candidate in their constituency. They will definitely consider voting AIMIM if it decides to contest independently without tying up with the MVA.

• However, if there is a Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate as per the seat sharing agreement, then they would be cautious because Uddhav Thackeray's ambivalent stance when it comes to the Waqf Amendment Bill has displeased the Muslims who voted for UBT Sena during the Lok Sabha elections.

4. The Anti-incumbency Factor

In the Haryana elections, of the 25 seats on which the BJP changed its candidates, 15 of them won. But of the 12 ministers who fought the assembly elections, nine of them lost. This shows that the anti-incumbency facing the sitting MLAs was significant.

When it comes to Maharashtra, the BJP state leadership is under a lot of pressure.

• This is because all those sugar barons, largely of the Maratha caste, which the BJP had imported from the NCP and the Congress in the 2014–2020 period, are now slowly returning back to their home routes. So, the BJP, while it imported these leaders, did not make any conscious efforts to groom first-generation leadership across the state, especially from the Maratha community.

• The Marathas have consistently been feeling across the state that their grip over the reins of power is fading. Ever since Devendra Fadnavis took charge of affairs in the state, he came into the limelight, and since he is a Brahmin, that thing doesn't go down well with them.

• Secondly, they have a feeling that the OBCs are now being given more importance. The landed caste group, at the end of the day, simply seeks reassurance that their position in the power structure will remain secure That assurance BJP has failed to convey to the Marathas.

Just two months back, there were the elections for the Vidhan Parishad, that is, the legislative council in Maharashtra, and the BJP fielded about six candidates, of which zero or one was from the Maratha community.

The BJP, while out of power between 2020 and 2022, could have made conscious efforts, constituency-wise, to locate talent from the Maratha community, bring it to the BJP, and groom them as first-generation leaders.

Unfortunately, the Maharashtra BJP is largely a one-man show with Fadnavis doing the heavy-lifting. Burdened with many responsibilities, he hasn't been able to focus on groundwork, and other state BJP leaders have shown little interest in stepping up. This reflects the current situation on the ground in Maharashtra.

5. The Groundwork And Micromanagement Formula

If one has been serving the party, say, for three decades in a particular constituency, and if the party wants to make you an MLA sometime in the future, concerted efforts are needed to project you as the party's representative in that constituency.

• In that aspect, full marks to Congress and NCP to ensure that in the next election, this particular person should be their face in that constituency. However, the BJP somehow always fails to do that in Maharashtra.

• And secondly, the big problem for the BJP in the state is that they don't have a solid network of cadres on the ground. On the contrary, the Congress, although it has been out of power in many states and it has also been out of power at the centre, Maharashtra is one such state where the Congress' cadre at ground level is still intact. They still have a party office in every nook and corner. They do have dedicated people regularly meeting in those offices, going out to people.

For example, in Marathwada, the Congress party has been now conducting events for OBC communities, and even among them they're trying to find out about micro-minority OBCs.

Among OBCs, you have larger castes like Dhangars, who account for 10 to 11 per cent. Then you have Vanjaris, who count for about five to six per cent. Now they're trying to find out those one or two per cent communities that do have a sizable impact in certain constituencies, and they are holding events for them.

Recently in Latur, Congress held an event for the Gor Banjara community. One might think this community is irrelevant in Marathwada and doesn't have that many numbers. They have good numbers in Vidarbha. But in some pockets of Latur, they do have good numbers, and they can affect the verdict in that Vidhan Sabha segment. So the BJP is failing to do that.

The BJP is largely seen as an OBC party in Maharashtra. BJP is not seen as a Maratha party historically. But it is taking communities for granted, as we don't see BJP leaders approaching these communities specifically and holding events for engaging with people.

6. Farmers And Businesses

The BJP and Mahayuti have done some great work in Maharashtra, which they need to highlight more, and not just the Ladki Bahin Yojana, because that alone cannot be a game changer as it is being projected.

• For example, it was under the Mahayuti government that companies like Ather Energy, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, or chemical makers like Lubrizol decided to set up their huge production facilities in Marathwada, which is a socially tense backward region, so that the local youth get jobs.

However, a lot of groundwork is still needed when it comes to addressing concerns of the farmers and the businesses.

• For example, the rates that are being offered in the agricultural produce markets across Maharashtra for soyabean are way below the mandated MSP. So farmers across the state are complaining.

• Onion farmers in Maharashtra used to get a subsidy for erecting sheds in the farms in which they could store their onions. The Maharashtra government suddenly stopped issuing subsidies for those onion sheds two months ago. There was a report in a popular agricultural news daily called Agrowon that this has been stopped.

Farmers understand how the Mahayuti or BJP behaves when it comes to farmer-related decisions. They clearly point out that the onion exports were curtailed only until the Lok Sabha elections, and for the sake of gaining votes, they removed the export restrictions on onions.

So in the case of soyabean as well, the government has only now increased the import duty on it so that the domestic soyabean produce gets a good rate. So farmers might not be angry with the BJP or Mahayuti, but they feel taken for granted.

Mumbai is located in Maharashtra, and the state is the growth engine of India. It is one of the largest contributors to the GDP and contributes massively to the income tax and GST collections.

But the harassment from the local government bodies still continues, and examples of which are many.

• The recent one that caught media attention in the state and blew up in business circles was Shiv Sena leader Ramdas Kadam's son Yogesh Kadam, allegedly using his position and power, to send notice to the Mercedes-Benz factory in Chakan, Pune, saying that they have received complaints related to the factory flouting pollution control norms.

  All this was done because reportedly he just wanted to enter the factory, and he even clicked pictures, which is not allowed in the auto assembly lines for the sake of IPR and other rules.

In conclusion, Marathwada and Vidarbha are the two regions where Mahayuti needs to put in the efforts.