Maha surge decimates Opposition

Shiv Kumar
Tribune News Service
Mumbai, May 23

The Congress has been left totally decimated in Maharashtra with all senior leaders losing their seats as the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance breached the last remaining bastions in the state.

The once Grand Old Party looked to be consoled in the Chandrapur Lok Sabha constituency where its candidate Suresh Dhanorkar enjoyed a slim lead over BJP's minister Hansraj Ahir.

Among the big losers today is Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Party president Ashok Chavan who lost his Nanded Lok Sabha seat to BJP's Pratap Chikhlikar by a margin of 50,000 votes. Chavan had managed to win Nanded in 2014. Chikhlikar resigned as Sena's MLA to contest on the BJP ticket against Chavan.

Another big loser is Mumbai Congress chief Milind Deora who lost to sitting MP Arvind Sawant of the Shiv Sena from the South Mumbai constituency. Deora's high-voltage campaign had industrialist Mukesh Ambani and banker Uday Kotak endorsing him. Even Raj Thackeray held one of his video campaigns targeting PM Narendra Modi. However, Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal played a major role in mobilising Gujarati voters in favour of Sawant despite their reservations against him.

The Congress' other known faces like Priya Dutt and Urmila Matondkar, too, have had to face ignominious exit.

Later in the evening, Ashok Chavan admitted responsibility for the party's defeat. "The party leadership will decide whether I will continue as the party chief in Maharashtra."

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Congress' ally, was marginally better in four seats it contested. Supriya Sule retained her Baramati seat by a margin of 1.5 lakh votes. While she bagged 6,83,705 votes, BJP's Kanchan Kul won 5,28,711. Sule's nephew Parth Pawar, however, lost his debut battle from the Maval seat to Shiv Sena's Shrirang Barne. Son of former state Deputy CM Ajit Pawar, Parth polled 5,03,375 votes against Barne's 7,18,950.

The party's candidate Amol Kolhe, however, wrested the Shirur Lok Sabha seat from Shiv Sena's Shivajirao Adhalrao Patil. Kolhe is a popular television actor who played the role of Sambhaji in a serial. The party has also backed an actress from the Telugu screen, Navneet Kaur Rana, who is contesting as an Independent against Shiv Sena's Anandrao Adsul. Rana is leading by a slim margin of around 16,000 votes.

The massive victory of the saffron alliance comes at a time when Maharashtra is in the midst of an agrarian crisis. The Congress-NCP is seen as failing to capitalise on popular anger over Maratha reservation and attacks on Dalits.

Even the high-profile campaigns by Raj Thackeray had failed to yield any results. Reacting to the poor results, Thackeray tweeted that Verdict2019 was "Beyond Rationale!"

Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis said the "Modi wave" turned into a tsunami this time. "Today's mandate has proved that people have accepted Modiji on a larger scale than before. The country has witnessed a Modi tsunami this time. It is for the first time that an incumbent government came back to power with a bigger mandate."