New Delhi:
The ruling Mahayuti will win the 2024 Maharashtra election, four of seven exit polls said Wednesday evening, shortly after the close of single-phase voting in the state. Two others, however, predict a hung result in the last major state poll of the year. But a health warning: exit polls often get it wrong.
According to Matrize and Peoples Pulse, the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party alliance will win 150-195 seats in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly.
Matrize has given the Mahayuti between 150 and 170 seats, while Peoples Pulse has been much more generous and given the BJP-led coalition between 175 and 195 seats.
The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance – the Congress and the Sena and NCP factions led by ex-Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and former Union Minister Sharad Pawar – likely to fall short, with Matrize giving it a maximum of 130 seats and Peoples Pulse just 112.
However, two other polls – P-Marq and the Lokshahi Marathi-Rudra – believe it be a close fight, and that neither alliance will secure enough for an outright win.
P-Marq expects the Mahayuti to get 137 to 157 seats and the MVA between 126 and 146, while Lokshahi Marathi-Rudra thinks the BJP alliance will get 128-142 and the MVA 125-140.
The majority mark in the Maharashtra Assembly is 145.
The 2019 Maharashtra election resulted in a thumping win for the BJP and (then 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.
