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Business News/ Opinion / Maharashtra polls: Parties struggle to find candidates after alliance break-up
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Maharashtra polls: Parties struggle to find candidates after alliance break-up

But having a candidate with elective merit is no guarantee of victory, as the contests this time will be five-cornered

Most surveys predicted that BJP will win over 100 seats if it contested alone. However, 145 seats are required to claim majority, and in such a scenario, MNS with 15-20 seats might prove handy. Photo: HT Premium
Most surveys predicted that BJP will win over 100 seats if it contested alone. However, 145 seats are required to claim majority, and in such a scenario, MNS with 15-20 seats might prove handy. Photo: HT

Mumbai: It’s one thing to part with your allies, and quite another to find suitable candidates from your own party, as Maharashtra’s political parties have belatedly realized.

Both alliances in Maharashtra—Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Shiv Sena and Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)—broke up on Thursday as each party felt it was not getting enough seats by remaining in the alliance. However, as soon as they announced their individual willingness to go solo for the 15 October assembly election, the reality of not having candidates with ‘elective merit’ for all 288 assembly seats hit home.

And then began the last-minute rush to poach candidates from rival parties.

Sanjay Deotale, Congress leader and minister for environment and cultural affairs in the outgoing government joined the BJP on Saturday morning, the last day for filing nomination papers. He will contest from Warora constituency in Chandrapur district of Vidarbha, from where he is currently a legislator.

On Friday evening, Uday Samant, minister of state for urban development and NCP leader from Ratnagiri district in Konkan region, joined the Sena and on Saturday, he filed nomination papers as a Sena candidate from Ratnagiri constituency.

Legislators, ex-legislators, zilla parishad members and corporators switching parties in pursuit of tickets is common, but these two examples are interesting for a different reason.

Vidarbha is supposed to be a stronghold of BJP and Konkan of the Sena, but neither party could find a suitable candidate from its own ranks.

Unlike the Congress and NCP, the BJP and Sena always contested elections for local self-government institutions as an alliance. This has led to defunct grassroots organizations at one or the other party. So, they were much more desperate to ‘import’ candidates from rivals.

Again, after the general election drubbing of Congress and NCP, there was little excitement from turncoat ticket-seekers for these parties. Out of 48 Lok Sabha seats, Congress and NCP managed to win only two and four seats respectively.

But having a candidate with elective merit is no guarantee of victory, as the contests this time will be five-cornered. The biggest beneficiary of the break-ups is likely to be Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which was crushed in the Lok Sabha elections. Its candidates lost deposits on all nine seats it contested, and did not cross the six-digit figure on any seat.

The nature of the contest has made the elections highly unpredictable. In 2009, average polling percentage across Maharashtra was 60% and average votes polled by the winning candidates across the state were around 70,000. But that was essentially a bipolar fight, with the Congress-NCP on one side and the BJP-Sena on the other.

However, in a five-cornered contest, if polling percentage remains around 60%, as in the last three assembly polls, average votes required to win will come down to 45,000-50,000.

Though no one believes MNS will reach anywhere near the majority mark, with reduced number of votes required for winning, it could certainly reach a position to decide who will be Maharashtra’s chief minister.

Most surveys predicted that BJP will win over 100 seats if it contested alone. However, 145 seats are required to claim majority, and in such a scenario, MNS with 15-20 seats might prove handy.

The BJP’s decision to go solo was largely driven by three internal surveys, which gave it 110-144 seats if it contested alone. However, as the late Pramod Mahajan, its strategist and general secretary once said, one cannot go to the governor or president and stake claim for forming the government based on numbers given by surveys.

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Published: 29 Sep 2014, 08:43 AM IST
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