Fadnavis calls it ‘a slap to MVA’ as BJP wins 4 Maharashtra LC seats & tightens grip on Nagpur

BJP, which suffered a blow last year when ruling MVA won 4 seats in Vidarbha, was victorious in Nagpur and Akola-Washim-Buldhana seats in the Legislative Council.

Devendra Fadnavis hugs Chandrashekhar Bawankule, winner of the Nagpur MLC seat | Photo: Devendra Fadnavis/Twitter

Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won four out of six seats in the Maharashtra Legislative Council, including Nagpur, in what has come as a major boost for the party.

The BJP had suffered a blow in last year’s MLC elections, including in its stronghold of Vidarbha (which includes Nagpur), with the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), an alliance between the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and Congress, walking away with four seats.

The BJP’s Chandrashekhar Bawankule, who was a minister in the previous Devendra Fadnavis-led government in Maharashtra, won the Nagpur MLC seat, beating Mangesh Deshmukh, an independent candidate that the Congress had backed, by 176 votes. From the Akola-Washim-Buldhana seat, BJP’s Vasant Khandelwal triumphed over Shiv Sena’s Gopikishan Bajoria, who was MLC from the seat for the past three terms, by 109 votes. The voting was held on 10 December, while the counting took place Tuesday.

Results for four other seats, two of them from Mumbai, were also announced, but because other candidates withdrew their nominations, the winners were elected unopposed. These were Rajhans Singh and Amrish Patel of the BJP from Mumbai and Dhule Nandurbar respectively, Satej Patil of the Congress from Kolhapur, and Sunil Shinde of the Shiv Sena from Mumbai.

The MLC elections for these six seats were held because of the retirement of sitting members. The MLC polls are usually held biennially and candidates are elected by members of local authorities or bodies (and even graduates and teachers for certain seats) of the state.

Fadnavis, the leader of the opposition in the assembly, was jubilant when he spoke to reporters in Nagpur after the BJP’s win. “I am happier today than the day when I won the election. This victory has given a slap to the MVA. The mathematics that was being put forward was if all three MVA parties can come together, they can win. This election has shown that this was a wrong assumption. Maharashtra’s people are with the BJP and in future too we will get their blessings,” Fadnavis said.

When the MVA was cobbled together after the 2019 state polls, the BJP had called it an “unnatural alliance”, but got a jolt when the combination of parties won four MLC seats in 2020, and in October this year, outperformed the BJP. The BJP’s victory in this month’s MLC elections, therefore, have come as a relief to the party.

The Nagpur factor

The BJP’s victory in its traditional bastion of Nagpur is particularly significant for the party since it comes at a time when the Congress seemed to be making significant inroads.

In the 2014 assembly elections, the BJP had swept the district, winning 10 out of 11 seats. In 2019, however, the BJP’s tally went down to seven, with the Congress winning three seats, and one going to an independent candidate.

Last year, the Congress also won the Nagpur division graduates’ constituency election for the Legislative Council — a seat that the BJP had held for decades, and which was once occupied by Nitin Gadkari, now the Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways

In October this year, the BJP suffered a drubbing in Nagpur in bypolls to zilla parishads and panchayat samitis, winning just three of the 16 zilla parishad seats and six of the 31 panchayat samiti seats that had elections in the region. Bawankule was in charge of leading the BJP into these elections.

“The BJP is anyway strong in Nagpur, but now with Chandrashekhar Bawankule’s victory the morale of all our karyakartas across Vidarbha has been boosted,” Fadnavis said Tuesday. “Political arithmetic doesn’t necessarily say that if three parties come together they will win. Because in politics, chemistry matters more than arithmetic.”

Congress leaders blame ‘miscalculations’ for defeat

Congress sources said the party’s defeat was the result of several miscalculations by its state leadership. The Congress initially fielded Ravindra ‘Chotu’ Bhoyar, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) karyakarta and a BJP corporator until last month, but on the eve of the election, pulled away its support and backed independent Mangesh Deshmukh instead.

A senior Nagpur-based Congress leader who did not wish to be named said that backing Bhoyar in the first place was a mistake. “Our fate was sealed the moment the leadership decided to back Bhoyar over more capable in-house candidates. It is like we weren’t even in the fray. It was all a big confusion,” the Congress leader told ThePrint.

Rajendra Mulak, the Nagpur district Congress president, told ThePrint that the BJP’s full-throttle approach to the polls was also a factor in its victory. “The decision on candidates, that may have been a part of political strategy, but basically we got the votes that we were anyway expecting, while the BJP went out of its way flexing its muscles and influencing voters to win the election,” he claimed.

On Shiv Sena’s loss in the Akola-Washim-Buldhana seat, party spokesperson Manisha Kayande told ThePrint that the MVA needs to introspect. “This loss was highly unexpected. Gopikishan Bajoria has won for three terms. We don’t know really what happened. We are doubting that BJP was resorting to corrupt practices. But we need to introspect and other two MVA partners should also introspect,” he said.

Bawankule’s win strengthens BJP’s OBC outreach

Bawankule is a three-term former MLA from Nagpur’s Kamptee assembly constituency who was denied a ticket in the 2019 polls, resulting in protests by his followers. Bawankule is said to be close to Union Minister Gadkari, and there was a growing perception within the party that the leader was dropped as part of a plan by Fadnavis to consolidate his hold over the state BJP and promote those loyal to him.

However, allowing a perception of Bawankule being sidelined also risked hurting the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community in Nagpur, since he is a Teli community leader who started off as an auto-rickshaw driver.

Bawankule’s victory in the Nagpur MLC polls helps the BJP appease the OBC community at a time when it is trying to target the MVA government for being unable to defend political reservations for the OBCs in the apex court.

Bawankule’s nomination to the MLC seat was arguably one of the BJP’s moves to show that it wants to keep its old guard happy and that there is no discord within the party. Fadnavis stood next to Bawankule while he filed his nomination last month to emphasise this. After the win, too, Fadnavis garlanded Bawankule, while the new MLC responded with an embrace and happy tears. At the very least, Bawankule’s win has been great for optics.

(Edited by Asavari Singh)