Maharashtra, Haryana polls: Voting begins in BJP's first electoral test after LS victory

Polling began at 7am on Monday to elect Maharashtra and Haryana assemblies, with the BJP and its allies seeking to retain power in the two states on the back of the recent Lok Sabha polls victory, while the opposition is hoping to turn the tide by taking advantage of any anti-incumbency.

Bypolls will also be held to 51 assembly seats and two Lok Sabha constituencies spread across 18 states.

In Maharashtra, where the 'Mahayuti' alliance of BJP, Shiv Sena and smaller parties is against the 'Maha-agadhi' led by the Congress and the NCP, a total of 8,98,39,600 people, including 4,28,43,635 women, are eligible to vote.

As many as 3,237 candidates, including 235 women, are contesting in 288 seats and 96,661 polling booths are in place with 6.5 lakh staff for the voting exercise.

The ruling BJP is locked in a contest with the opposition Congress and the fledgling JJP for the 90 assembly seats in Haryana which has over 1.83 crore voters, including 85 lakh women and 252 transgenders, while 19,578 polling stations have been set up.

Polling commenced from 7am and will continue till 6pm. Tight security arrangements have been made with deployment of more than three lakh personnel from state police and central forces in Maharashtra, while over 75,000 security personnel have been mobilised in Haryana.

Counting of votes will be on October 24.

Prominent candidates in the Maharashtra fray are Chief Minister Fadnavis and his predecessors from Congress, Ashok Chavan, who is in fray from Bhokar in Nanded district, and Prithviraj Chavan seeking re-election from Karad South in Satara district.

Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray, son of Uddhav Thackeray, is contesting from Worli in Mumbai. The 29-year-old is the first from the Thackeray family to make debut in electoral politics.

Prominent amongst those in the Haryana contest are Chief Minister Khattar (Karnal), former chief minister and Congress Legislative Party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda (Garhi Sampla-Kiloi), Randeep Singh Surjewala (Kaithal), Kiran Choudhary (Tosham) and Kuldeep Bishnoi (Adampur) and JJP's Dushyant Chautala (Uchana Kalan).

The BJP has fielded three sportspersons—Babita Phogat (Dadri), Yogeshwar Dutt (Baroda in Sonipat) and Sandeep Singh (Pehowa)—besides TikTok star Sonali Phogat (Adampur).

The government's decision to abrogate Article 370 provisions, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and the NRC were among the BJP campaign's key themes for the assembly polls. In 2014, in Maharashtra, the BJP had won 122 seats and the Sena 63 seats. They joined hands after the polls to form the government. In Haryana, the BJP had won 47 seats, while the Indian National Lok Dal, once the saffron party's ally, won 19 seats. The Congress won 15. 

A victory for the BJP will have huge ramifications at the national level too. Come 2020, and eight Rajya Sabha seats—six from Maharashtra, including the one held by Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar—will fall vacant. If the BJP is able to win both the states by a good margin, it would win at least five seats in the upper house, thereby significantly boosting the Union government’s ability to pass crucial bills. A Congress victory, on the other hand, will not only improve its Rajya Sabha numbers, but also help revive the grand old party at the national level. Having Mumbai, India’s financial capital, under its control can revive the Congress and the NCP organisationally as well.

In Maharashtra, Congress has been facing a steep downward slide across crucial regions for years now. In the highly industrialised Mumbai-Thane regions, the BJP is now breathing down the necks of its alliance partner Shiv Sena—the two parties won 20 and 23 seats respectively in 2014—after reducing the Congress to a paltry 5. In Mumbai, the Congress saw its tally descend from double digits to a mere 2 in 2014. In Vidarbha, one of the most underdeveloped regions, the BJP won almost 45 seats in 2014, while the Congress found its number more than halved to 10. In Marathwada, infamous for droughts and farmer suicides, BJP-Shiv Sena combined won around 25 of the 48 seats, reducing the Congress, again, to single digits (9).

The Congress faces the dangerous prospect of utter elimination in Haryana. The BJP won a stunning victory in the 2014 Assembly election, coming to power for the first time in Haryana, where it had been a 'third place' player for decades. In that election, the BJP, effectively, swapped places with the Congress, which had ruled Haryana for two straight terms. In the subsequent sweeping 2019 Lok Sabha victory, the Congress was washed out in the state and the BJP had breached even the traditional bastions of its opponents. Both Hooda, who fought from Sonipat, and his son and three-time MP Deepender Singh Hooda, who contested from Rohtak, lost. If south Haryana was on BJP's target in the last polls, it has now set its eyes on the Jat-dominated Deswali region, comprising Rohtak, Jhajjar and Sonipat districts, from where Congress had won the most seats in 2014. Will the Congress party be able to prove critics wrong?

Voting will also be held in bypolls to 51 assembly seats spread across 17 states.

The BJP and its allies had nearly 30 of these assembly seats, while the Congress had won 12 and the rest were with regional parties.

Among the states ruled by the BJP and its allies, the maximum 11 seats will have bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, followed by six in Gujarat, five in Bihar, four in Assam and two each in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

The other states where bypolls will be held are Punjab (4 seats), Kerala (5 seats), Sikkim (3 seats), Rajasthan (two seats) and one seat each in Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Puducherry, Meghalaya and Telangana.

-Inputs from PTI