The former will continue to be led by a BJP-led alliance, while the latter by a local party with tribal consciousness. In both cases, the importance of local dynamics on the proposals of the major parties at the national level, including Congress, was once again evident. Participation close to 70% and pre-election polls in many cases off course.
New Delhi (/Agencies) – Maharashtra was left in the hands of the ruling alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while Jharkhand will continue to be led by a local party, the Mukti Morcha, supported by the Congress and other left-wing parties . These are the electoral results for the local assemblies that were known today at the end of the count.
In Maharashtra, where turnout was 66.05%, the highest since 1995, the Mahayuti alliance won 225 seats out of 288, while the opposition, which had formed a coalition called Maha Vikas Aghadi, won 54. Another nine seats were won by third party candidates. Within the Mahayuti alliance, the BJP, a Hindu ultranationalist party from which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also comes, won the largest number of seats, followed by the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Chief Minister Eknath Shinde thanked the voters, stating that the electorate had rewarded the government for its work in the last two years.
The elections in Maharashtra were characterized by numerous disagreements, which caused a radical transformation of the political landscape in the last five years, fragmenting it into six parties. In fact, the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition consists of the Congress party, which won 19 seats, as well as factions of the Shiv Sena and the NCP, which left their respective parties and joined the opposition to oppose the personalities of Shinde and to the BJP. In the 2019 elections, the BJP and the Shiv Sena won the elections against the Congress and the NCP, but could not agree on the post of chief minister, a role that has been filled by three different personalities in the last five years: Devendra Fadnavis, from the BJP, Uddhav Thackeray, from the Shiv Sena (now an ally of the Congress in the opposition) and, finally, Eknath Shinde, in power from 2022.
Also in Jharkhandthe election result underlined the key role of local parties: turnout was similar to that of Maharashtra, at 67.74%. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) was declared the winner: along with the Congress and other minor parties it won over 50 seats, while the BJP-led alliance stopped at just over 20 out of 81. In 2019, the JMM coalition had won 47 seats and Hemant Soren was appointed chief minister, who will continue in office, despite the fact that several pre-election polls (as is often the case in India) predicted a close race or, in some cases, a BJP victory. In the lower house elections, the BJP alliance had won eight of the 14 parliamentary seats thanks to votes from Jharkhand.
Jharkand, which was formed in 2000 from a partition with Bihar, is characterized by a large tribal population. The BJP’s proposal to introduce a uniform civil code to homogenize the practices of different groups has been viewed with suspicion by local populations, who fear the loss of their customs and autonomy.
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