E Shinde, Ajit Pawar In Focus As Breakaway Leaders Upstage Mentors

Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena, and the Nationalist Congress Party offshoot led by Ajit Pawar, flipped 75 seats - from their parent parties to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led ruling Mahayuti alliance - in the Maharashtra Assembly election.

The flip underlines the impact of the Sena and NCP split - the former in 2022 and the latter a year later - on the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi's fortunes. Sans those 75 seats, it was unable to counter a BJP poll machine that dominated today, and recorded its best ever solo score in a Maharashtra election.

At 7.30 pm the BJP had won 99 seats and was leading in 34 others in the 288-seat House.

The MVA - decimated after claiming victory in the April-June federal election, in which it won 30 of the state's 48 Lok Sabha seats - had only 45 to its name. The gap is 89 - almost exactly the number the Shinde Sena and Ajit Pawar's NCP won off their parent parties, not including the nine the BJP flipped.

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Its solo show aside, the BJP will still, most likely, need the Shinde Sena and Ajit Pawar's seats to cross the majority mark of 145. And it is those two that will put its larger ally out of reach of the MVA.

Overall, the Shinde Sena and Ajit Pawar are on course to win 98 seats.

Where Did The 98 Come From?

Only a small chunk - less than two dozen overall - comes from seats that were contested by other parties (mostly the BJP or Congress) in 2019 and given to the Shinde Sena and Ajit Pawar this time.

The rest have been flipped from their parent parties, and this, potentially, is one of the areas where the Maha Vikas Aghadi lost this election.

The Shinde Sena and Ajit Pawar's NCP contested 81 and 59 seats in this election, and they are leading in 57 (47 wins, 10 leads) and 41 (37 wins, four leads), respectively.

On the other side, Thackeray's Sena contested 95 seats but is leading only in 20 (18 wins, two leads), and Sharad Pawar's NCP contested 86 seats but won only 11.

Of the Shinde Sena's 57 leads+wins, 40 were won by the undivided Sena in the 2019 election.

Similarly, of Ajit Pawar's NCP's 37 leads+wins, 35 were won by Sharad Pawar's NCP.

Had the Sena and NCP not split, it would have handed the MVA those 75 seats.

These would not, perhaps, have been enough for the Maha Vikas Aghadi to win this election, but it would certainly have been enough to push the BJP to a much closer finish.

What Exit Polls Said

The MVA had only been given a (very) slim chance of upsetting the in-power BJP-led alliance's applecart in the final election of the year; only one of 11 exit polls studied by NDTV believed it can win. Three others were on the fence but even they tilted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party.

An average of those 11 exit polls gives the Mahayuti 155 seats and the MVA only 120, with smaller parties and independent candidates expected to get the remaining 13.

But a health warning: exit polls often get it wrong.

A majority of those exit polls predicted a big win for the Mahayuti.

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Across the aisle, only one - Electoral Edge - expected the Congress' alliance to win and, even then, by five seats only, with 20 seats from smaller parties and independents in play for the BJP.

What Happened In 2019?

The 2019 election resulted in a thumping win for the BJP and the undivided Sena; the saffron party won 105 seats (down 17 from 2014) and its ally 56 (down seven).

However, two long-time allies fell out, quite spectacularly, in the following days after they failed to agree a power-sharing deal. Mr Thackeray then led his Sena into a surprise alliance with the Congress and Sharad Pawar's NCP (then also undivided) to shut out a furious BJP.

Much to the surprise of many, the ruling tripartite alliance lasted for nearly three years despite the divergent political beliefs and ideologies of the Sena and the Congress-NCP.

Eventually, it was an internal rebellion led by Sena leader Eknath Shinde that ousted the MVA government. Mr Shinde led Sena lawmakers into a deal with the BJP, forcing Mr Thackeray to resign and allowing himself to be named as the new Chief Minister.

The NCP split a year later in a near-identical process that saw Ajit Pawar and lawmakers loyal to him joining the BJP-Shinde Sena, and he then became a Deputy Chief Minister.

Since then, Maharashtra politics has been roiled in controversy that extended to the Supreme Court, which heard petitions and cross-petitions on disqualification of MLAs and, in the build-up to this election, pleas on which Sena and NCP faction is the 'real' one.

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