By Saarthak Anand
Prior to the crucial Assembly polls in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, the Indian National Congress has received a shot in the arm. It has bagged Maharashtras Nanded-Waghala Municipal election, winning an unprecedented two-thirds majority. The party managed 73 seats out of 81 in the council, surpassing its previous tally of 41 by a considerable margin.
Major losses for other parties
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)in power in the statecould manage only six seats, up from two in the last election. The rise of the Congress was mostly at the expense of the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). All of these failed to win a single seat despite performing better than the BJP in the previous election. Ashok Chavan, sitting Nanded Member of Parliament (MP) and the leader of the Congress campaign said, Muslims have understood that the AIMIM cannot be an option to the BJP. They voted for the Congress. The statement assumes significance in light of the fact that the Congress had emerged victorious in the recent local-body polls in Parbhani, Malegaon and Bhiwandi, all of which have a sizable Muslim population. Notably, almost all sitting corporators of the AIMIM who had jumped ship to the Congress prior to the election retained their seats.
High-profile BJP campaigns
Besides being a prestige battle for Chavan, who had to resign from the Chief Ministers post in 2010 following the Adarsh housing society scam, the election saw the BJP raise the stakes through its active campaigning. The party had roped in Shiv Sena Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA), Pratap Patil Chikhlikar, in the run-up to the poll. More than 10 ministers in the state cabinet had also participated in the campaign. CM Devendra Fadnavis had addressed a couple of rallies himself. In addition, 13 Congress corporators had shifted base to the BJP and all of them ended up losing their seats. Chavan wasted little time in painting the result as a sign of BJPs diminishing popularity. He remarked, The BJP is on a downslide. It has started from Maharashtra and will now be felt in other states too.
Reading between the lines
It is abundantly clear that the outcome has come as a big boost for the Congress while cementing Ashok Chavans position in the party. Too much should not, however, be read into the BJPs loss. Despite demonstrating only a slight improvement on the number of its corporators, the party massively increased its vote share to 24 percent, up from 3.81 percent last time. Furthermore, Nanded has been a Congress bastion for quite a long period of time. It has been in power for two decades in the region, which had also stood by the Grand Old Party in the 2014 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Congress has a reason to celebrate and BJP to introspect, but there are bigger battles still to be fought.
Featured Image Source: Flickr