The South Wing

Maharastra, India’s third largest state, boasts not only one of the more advanced economies and  a world-class film industry based in Mumbai’s Bollywood, but also plays a significant role in the country’s political present. The Congress party, which dominated the post-independence political scene for much of the 20th century, has been quick to forge crucial alliances with strategically aligned parties in an era of coalition politics. In the state of Maharashtra, they have been in alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party over the last two election cycles, while the opposition BJP has been firmly allied with the Shiv Sena over the last two decades.

Over the past two decades and six elections, voting patterns in Maharastra have changed considerably: The 1989 poll saw the Congress dominate all over, from urban, coastal Mumbai to the more rural interior. The dramatic rise of the BJP-Shiv Sena combine in the 1996 elections re-shaped the electoral map, and posed a significant threat to the hegemony the Congress enjoyed in the state up until then. The past two decades in Maharashtra have also seen an economy reformed, the intermittent breaking out of communal violence, and the ghastly terror attacks of 26/11. With this in mind, we look at how Maharastra has moved, politically.

A quick preface. To simplify the trends, we divided the map not by Lok Sabha seats, but by region within Maharastra, and showed the coalition that had the highest vote share in each. In India’s ‘First past the post’ system, this is not necessarily commensurate to the number of Lok Sabha seats won by a given party. Therefore, even if a political party gets a clear majority of votes throughout a given region or state, it would not necessarily win all, or even the majority of seats to the Lok Sabha. The 2004 elections, for example. were a landslide for the BJP-Shiv Sena in terms of percentage of votes, but the number of Lok Sabha seats won by the two coalitions in the state were almost even. This is also a function of the relative importance of the five polling regions in the state, namely Paschim Maharashtra, Vidarbha, Marathawada, Konkan and Mumbai.
The 1989 electoral map reveals a clean sweep for the Congress and its allies throughout Maharashtra, with near absolute majorities in Pashchim Maharashtra, Konkan and Vidharba. Only the historically underdeveloped region of Marathawada and a small swath of Mumbai were claimed by the BJP and the Shiv Sena.

The 1991 elections were unique in the annals of Maharashtra voting history. The Congress swept all five regions in the state singlehandedly, with the Communist Party Marxist (CPM) getting the majority share of votes only in the Wardha district of Vidharba. Save a few narrow majorities in Marathawada and Mumbai, the BJP and the Shiv Sena were virtually wiped out.

This dynamic was altered dramatically in the 1996 elections. Choosing to go it alone, Congress was only able to retain Pashchim Maharashtra. Even though they were able to garner a respectable 15 of the 48 seats, the change in the electoral map from the ‘91 elections is striking. This is attributable to some extent to the upsurge in Hindutva politics propagated by the Shiv Sena and the BJP following the ghastly Mumbai riots of 1992-1993, in which roughly 250 people lost their lives.

However, unpredictably, the elections in 1998 completely reversed the ‘96 verdict and restored the Congress to its winning ways. With the exception of Konkan and Mumbai, the Congress swept the state. An important factor in these elections was the resurgence of the Republican Party of India (RPI), which eroded the vote bank of the BJP-Shiv Sena combine, picking up 4 seats.

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In the 1999 elections, the Congress forged an alliance with Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). However, despite the significant clout commanded by the NCP in Maharashtra, the BJP- Shiv Sena swept majority voter sentiment, in what was a near repeat of the 1998 elections. The Congress-NCP alliance only managed to cling on to the Congress stronghold of Pashchim Maharashtra.

The 2004 elections saw a further consolidation of the BJP-Shiv Sena vote bank across the state. The Congress allied with the NCP  managed to eek out majorities in parts of Mumbai and in Pashchim Maharashtra, with the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition claiming voter majorities in the rest of the state. However, the seat sharing agreement that the Congress struck up with the NCP afforded the Congress 22 out of the 48 seats, an impressive outcome given the continued deficit in voter confidence across the state.

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In the 2009 general elections, Maharashtra went to the polls on April 16th, April 23rd and April 30th. The voter turnout in Mumbai was a dismal 45%, expected to be much higher owing to the sense of urgency expressed by many ‘mumbaikars’ in light of the 26/11 terror attacks. The political landscape remains unchanged. The BJP is again teaming up with its staunch alliance partner the Shiv Sena, while the Congress chose to continue its partnership with the increasingly influential NCP. The incumbent Congress government has been trying to extoll the virtues of its good governance agenda, while the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance has wagered a significant bet on what it perceives as a failure of government in responding to the 26/11 attacks. If the past 6 elections are any indication, it is clear that voters who actually cast their ballots might not ultimately get the government they want, even if their views are expressed in a sizable majority. The ‘First Past the Post’ system will ensure that the strategic concentration of seats, rather than the democratic conception of strength in numbers, will determine the outcome of the 2009 elections in Maharashtra.