Counting of votes in Maharashtra and Jharkhand today
Counting of votes in the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly elections, and bypolls in several states will begin at 8 am. It’s the Mahayuti vs the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance in Maharashtra, while Hemant Soren’s JMM and allies fight the NDA.
Most exit polls have predicted a Mahayuti win in Maharashtra.
Three exit polls have, however, forecast neither the Mahayuti nor the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) would secure a decisive majority to form government.
This may lead to a situation where ‘resort politics’ may happen.
In Mahayuti, the BJP contested the largest number of seats at 148, followed by the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde at 80, and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar at 52. Mahayuti candidates are contesting in six more seats.
In the Opposition MVA, the Congress contested 102 seats, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Bal Thackeray) 96 seats, and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) 86 seats.
Two seats were contested by Samajwadi Party and two seats by smaller MVA allies.
This was the first election after splits in the NCP and the Shiv Sena. In the 2019 elections, BJP won 105 seats, the undivided Shiv Sena 56, undivided NCP 54, Congress 44, independents 13 and others 16 seats. The results today will have huge implications for all the parties, particularly NCP and Shiv Sena.
Uddhav Thackeray lost his chief ministerial position due to a split in his party in 2022 and the party has been keen to prove a point in the assembly polls.
His key rival Eknath Shinde also gained popularity due to welfare measures of the Mahayuti government. And now there is a seeming clash over who is the true inheritor of Balasaheb Thackeray’s legacy.
The NCP also suffered a split with Ajit Pawar joining the ruling alliance as Deputy Chief Minister in July last year.
His uncle Sharad Pawar kept a tight campaign and has been keen to see that there is no dent to his long legacy in politics.