Maharashtra and Jharkhand elections in the name of continuity
The BJP alliance will continue to lead the former, while a local party will lead the latter, attentive to tribal issues. In both states, local politics again trumped over the largest national parties, including the Indian National Congress. Turnout falls short of 70 per cent and many pre-election polls were off the mark.
New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Vote counting in two state elections were completed today. Results indicate that Maharashtra will remain in the hands of an alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while Jharkhand will continue to be governed by a local party, the Mukti Morcha, backed by the Indian National Congress (INC) and other left-wing parties.
In Maharashtra, where turnout was 66.05 per cent, the highest since 1995, the Mahayuti alliance won 225 seats out of 288, while the opposition, united in the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition, won 54. Another nine seats went to third-party candidates.
Within the Mahayuti alliance, the BJP, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu ultranationalist party, won the most seats, followed by the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Chief Minister Eknath Shinde thanked voters saying that the electorate had rewarded his administration for its work over the past two years.
The political landscape in Maharashtra, which has radically changed in the past five years with fragmentation and splits, now includes six parties.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition is composed by the INC, which won 19 seats, but also factions from the Shiv Sena and the NCP that split from their respective parties and joined the opposition to Shinde and the BJP.
In the 2019, the BJP and the Shiv Sena won the election defeating the INC and the NCP, but failed to agree on who would be chief minister, a post held by three different people in the last five years: Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP, Uddhav Thackeray of the Shiv Sena (now an ally of INC in opposition), and finally Eknath Shinde, in power since 2022.
In Jharkhand, the election result also underlined the fundamental role played by local parties. The turnout was similar to Maharashtra’s, 67.74 per cent.
The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) was declared the winner; together with the INC and other smaller parties, it won over 50 seats, while the BJP-led alliance stopped at just over 20 out of 81.
In 2019, the JMM coalition had won 47 seats. Hemant Soren was appointed chief minister at the time will continue in this position, despite several pre-election polls (as is often the case in India) predicting a close race or, in some cases, a BJP victory.
Jharkhand, which was split off from Bihar in 2000, has a large tribal population. In this year’s election to the Lok Sabha (lower house), the BJP-led alliance won 8 out of 14 of Jharkhand's seats.
The BJP's proposal to introduce a uniform Civil Code to standardise the practices of various groups was met with suspicion by the local population, fearing the loss of their customs and autonomy.
.png)
23/02/2024 19:29
