Party breaks conventional mould of currying favour with dominant castes by naming ‘Brahmin’ Fadnavis in Maratha land, ‘non-Jat’ Khattar in Jat land as CM candidates
The exit polls have predicted that the BJP will retain power with a bigger mandate in Maharashtra — where the saffron party fought elections in alliance with the Shiv Sena — and Haryana.
All the exit polls, conducted by various media houses and poll agencies, have ruled out any possibility of political rivals posing a challenge to the BJP in Haryana and the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in Maharashtra. Haryana and Maharashtra registered 65.5 per cent and 60.25 per cent polling respectively on Monday.
Some of the exit polls indicated that the BJP on its own may reach the majority figure of 145 in Maharashtra on its own with CNN-News18-IPSOS predicting 243 seats for the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance with the BJP winning 141 and Shiv Sena 102 seats in the 288-member Assembly. India Today-Axis predicted between 166 and 194 seats for the alliance in Maharashtra.
CNN-News18-IPSOS has restricted political rivals the Congress-NCP combine in Maharashtra to 41 seats, while India Today-Axis exit poll projected the Congress-NCP alliance to win 72-90 seats in the State. The ABP-C Voter predicted 204 seats for the BJP-Shiv Sena and 69 for the Congress-NCP in Maharashtra.
In the 90-member Haryana Assembly, the BJP is predicted to win maximum 80 seats while an average of all exit polls indicated 66 seats for the party. CNN-News 18-IPSOS predicted 75 seats for the BJP, 10 for the Congress, and zero for the INLD. Other parties in Haryana are projected to win anywhere from 8 to 12 seats, according to various exit-polls.
The ABP-C Voter forecasted that the BJP will improve its 2014 results by winning 72 seats, while the Congress will bag only 8 seats in Haryana.
A majority of exit polls suggest the BJP’s facile success in Maharashtra may whittle down the influence of its taciturn ally Shiv Sena which until the fag-end of the campaign was questioning the confidence of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis vis-Ã -vis the Congress-NCP alliance.
The BJP and the Shiv Sena had fought the 2014 Maharashtra Assembly elections separately with the BJP emerging as the single largest party with 122 seats and 27.8 per cent vote share. The Shiv Sena came second with 63 seats and 19.3 per cent votes. The Congress and the NCP came third and fourth with 42 and 41 seats respectively.
It is the first time that the BJP’s strategy of projecting a Brahmin Chief Minister (Fadnavis) in the Maratha land of Maharashtra, and a non-Jat Chief Minister (Manohar Lal Khattar) in the Jat land of Haryana is likely to pay dividends. Fadnavis was the only Brahmin in his Cabinet and only the second Brahmin to occupy the CM post in Maharashtra. The first was late Manohar Joshi of the Sena.
Of the total 18 Chief Ministers that Maharashtra has had till date, 12 were from the Maratha community. As to counter the criticism of dominant Maratha political lobbies, Fadnavis and his party roped in a scion of Chhatrapati Shivaji by nominating Sambhaji Raje to the Rajya Sabha in 2016.
Therefore, the successive victory of the BJP in the two caste-conscious States may change conventional poll strategies of cultivating the dominant communities.
The meteoric rise of the BJP in Haryana also coincides with the fall of the INLD and its subsequent breakup. Before 2019 Lok Sabha elections, INLD leader Dushyant Chautala was expelled from the party after a fight with his uncle Abhay Chautala. Dushyant floated his own party, the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), which managed to win 4.9 per cent of the votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and is contesting Assembly poll separately. Exit poll of Republic TV projects the JJP to win 5 to 9 seats in Haryana.