Ashok Dhawale
Credit: Facebook/Ashok Dhawale
New Delhi: The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi lost the Maharashtra assembly polls as it became over-confident after the Lok Sabha poll results, delayed finalising seat-sharing, its constituents fought among themselves for contesting maximum number of seats, while the BJP and its allies resorted to communal polarisation and money power, CPI (Marxist) leader Ashok Dhawale said on Saturday.
The CPI(M), which retained the Dhanau assembly seat with sitting MLA Vinod Nikole defeating the BJP candidate by 5,347 votes in a close contest, called it a "massive victory" against the might of "unprecedented money power and communal conspiracies of the RSS-BJP combine".
The Left party had contested three seats. While it won the Dhanau seat, it lost Kalwan to Ajit Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate with a margin of over 8,000 votes, and Solapur City Central where its candidate was a distant fourth.
The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance on Saturday retained power in Maharashtra, maintaining sway over 230 of the 288 assembly seats, while the Maha Vikas Aghadi's dream of wresting power fizzled, with the opposition combine ahead in just 50 seats.
The Left party took out a victory march in Dhanau which was earlier Jawhar seat, which it had won the 10th time out of the last 11 Assembly elections since 1978.
The opposition bloc's loss in the state, after a good performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls, came as a set-back for the INDIA bloc.
Asked what led to this dismal performance, Dhawale told PTI, "There are several factors which will have to be further analysed, but after the Lok Sabha elections, the state government decided on various schemes like the Ladki Bahin Yojana, which provides for Rs 1,500 per month to women, and some schemes for construction workers, had an impact on the voters." And there was communal polarisation too created by the ruling BJP along with other organisations linked with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), he said.
The CPI(M) Politburo member also accused the BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP alliance of using money power, and alleged they doled out cash to voters.
"There was unprecedented use of money power, people are telling us volunteers of BJP gave packets of Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 to every home, even among the middle-class," he said.
The CPI(M) leader added that the MVA was also at fault, as they could not finalise the seat-sharing agreement in time and became over-confident after the Lok Sabha victory.
"The MVA was over-confident because of the victory in Lok Sabha. The seat adjustment... should have been done by September so that rest of the time could be used for public meetings," he said.
Dhawale said that during the Lok Sabha polls, the first state for which the INDIA bloc finalised the seat-sharing was Maharashtra which helped them achieve success.
He also said that smaller parties were not given enough space by the three main alliance parties -- the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) -- who wanted to contest maximum seats as they were in the race to have their own chief minister.
"The MVA was not inclusive, they should have been more inclusive of smaller parties, and should have taken them into confidence. The three big parties monopolised everything," he said.
"There were several issues that we could not raise properly, there is an agrarian crisis, like the crashing prices of soybean and cotton. During the Lok Sabha elections, the issue of fall in onion prices had an impact on the polls. We had a golden opportunity but it has been missed," he said.
The BJP-led Mahayuti secured a victory in the Maharashtra assembly polls, months after the opposition's Maha Vikas Aghadi won 29 out of the state's 48 parliamentary seats.
The BJP, however, won the by-election for Nanded in Maharashtra, bringing the MVA's tally down to 28.
Maharashtra Assembly poll 2024 results| Check constituency results here
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Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls took place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP went up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress tried to make their mark. Maha Yuti are currently comfortably poised to win. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faced a challenge after Hemant Soren's arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP, but look set to retain power with its I.N.D.I.A. allies. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.
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