The Maharashtra win reaffirms the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s dominance in Indian politics and its ability to leverage incumbency to win elections. Within the BJP, it reinforces Narendra Modi and Amit Shah’s control over the party. Within the larger Sangh Parivar, it ensures the continued recalibration of ties between the party and its ideological mentor and fraternal outfits that was set in motion after the Lok Sabha verdict on more collaborative terms. Within India’s political economy, it allows the BJP to continue to have tremendous influence over corporate India. And the results show to the Opposition that resting on the Lok Sabha laurels won’t get them far.
The Maharashtra and Jharkhand results also establish the centrality of welfare schemes in general — cash transfers to women in particular — as the winning formula in elections, with serious political economic consequences. The outcomes, when juxtaposed with the BJP’s success in Uttar Pradesh’s bypolls, show that Hindutva can work, or can fail, depending on the local context but that it will remain a central message for the BJP’s politics. The results also show the continued salience of caste, subcaste and tribal identities in shaping voter preferences but also the distinct ways in which they operate in their local specific settings.
Examine each of these implications of Saturday’s verdict separately in three broad baskets — on BJP’s politics, on the national Opposition, and on the broader direction of Indian politics, both in terms of the identity and development axis.
Despite the setback in Jharkhand — and make no mistake, the party is disappointed with what just happened in Ranchi — the BJP is pleased. And it is pleased because the Maharashtra outcome, on the back of the Haryana success last month, positions the party to demolish the narrative that the Lok Sabha verdict produced. That narrative was about how 2024 marked the beginning of the end of the BJP’s dominance; the state election results help BJP suggest, not without reason, that the party’s deep social roots, organisational strengths, and ability to act on feedback means that 2024 remains a part of the post-2014 continuum, a phase that is marked by the party’s dominance.
Just track the elections of the past year. The BJP doesn’t just have power at the Centre; the national map is again turning saffron. The party won all three states at the end of last year (MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh); it became a part of the ruling coalition in Andhra, won Odisha for the first time and retained Arunachal in the state elections that happened along with parliamentary elections; it returned to power in Haryana for the third time in deeply adverse circumstances; and it has just achieved a record win in Maharashtra, proving beyond doubt that it is the leading party of the state, a feat if you go back to the history of Maharashtra where BJP was a junior partner for much of its existence vis a vis Shiv Sena. The BJP remains the principal opposition in Delhi that goes to polls next, and is a part of the ruling coalition in Bihar that goes to polls at the end of 2025.
Within the party, this success means that Modi’s leadership, and both through the authority derived from Modi but also his own electoral track record, Shah’s control largely remains unchallenged. If there were voices in the wake of the Lok Sabha verdict that could be heard issuing warnings about this control, expect them to get muted further. This will also allow Modi and Shah to appoint the person they wish as the next party president; not replacing JP Nadda immediately after the Lok Sabha verdict was a gamble, for setbacks in Haryana and Maharashtra would have seen other power centres make a push for a candidate who may have been seen as more autonomous of the top two. But this renewed political legitimacy allows Modi and Shah to run the party pretty much as they wish.
At the same time, the Maharashtra outcome shows that the post-Lok Sabha recalibration of ties between the Sangh leadership, Sangh’s affiliates, and the BJP will continue. There is now enough evidence to suggest that parts of the Sangh machine were demotivated in the summer, and stayed out, and statements that denoted the BJP’s arrogance and unilateralism didn’t help. But the divergences were also overblown because ideologically, the Sangh has never seen its vision fulfilled to this extent and, organisationally, there has never been a greater flow of people associated with various affiliates into the government and the ruling party. What was missing was a greater sense of collaboration, more engagement, more receptivity to feedback at the top, and more synergy on the ground. In its centenary year, the Sangh leadership knows that having a strong Modi and a friendly government in its home state is ideal. This smoothening of divergences and greater collaboration will continue.
And finally, for the party, having a government in Mumbai means having greater control over corporate India. Businesses had begun hedging after the Lok Sabha verdict, unsure of the stability of the current dispensation and insuring themselves in preparation for the possible re-emergence of the Congress. The more recent American allegations against the Adani Group fit in well with Rahul Gandhi’s effort to position the rest of corporate India as a victim of the government’s alleged crony capitalism. But the Maharashtra verdict does two things. Within the wider Opposition, it will lead to doubts about the power of this narrative that focuses on the politics-business links and its appeal among the wider electorate especially since all parties appear compromised; and within the wider corporate world, there will be a sense that the Modi is here to stay. Both help the BJP.
And that is why, in terms of the political narrative, electoral map, control over the party, coordination within the larger ideological family and influence over sources of finance, the Maharashtra win is excellent news for the BJP.
For the anti-BJP forces, the silver lining on Saturday came from Ranchi.
The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led alliance returned to power in a context where the BJP had arrested the ruling party’s top leader and state’s chief minister, where the BJP had deployed its senior most leaders and tremendous resources to wrest power, and where the BJP had engaged in a communal campaign focused on othering Muslims in the name of fighting illegal immigrants. Given the social realities of the state and the presence of a substantial tribal population, the economic realities of the state and the possibility of rent seeking through natural resource extraction contracts, and the political realities where a loss would have left the Opposition with power in just Bengal in all of eastern India (with Bihar, Odisha and Assam already in the NDA tent), the win is a huge source of relief for the JMM, the Congress, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal which will hope for the verdict to have a domino effect in Bihar next year.
But this cannot take away from the huge blow that Maharashtra represents in three ways.
The Congress’s ability to take on the BJP comes under severe doubt again. This will make it harder for Rahul Gandhi to unite the parliamentary Opposition behind him and consolidate all other parties behind issues that he thinks are central to taking on the BJP; it will leave the Congress bereft of electoral opportunities where it is a strong dominant party till the Assam elections in middle of 2026; it will erode fund-raising possibilities; it makes the party’s comeback in Maharashtra, a state it dominated for so long and ran the government in for 15 long years till 2014, extraordinarily difficult; and it once again raises questions about the Congress’s consistency, organisational cohesion, and the appeal of its ideological platform.
The second implication is the fading of Sharad Pawar’s political star. The decline of his faction of the party may be a Maharashtra-specific trend, but Pawar’s stature went beyond his party and he remained a figure who commanded the respect across the Opposition. The election setback does not mean that others won’t take his calls, but it means that Pawar’s ability to rally the Opposition together against the BJP is now effectively over.
And finally, the biggest setback for the Opposition is the playbook that had enabled it to make inroads and gains during the Lok Sabha elections has perhaps run its course for now, both on the development and identity axis.
There is no one playbook that works in elections. And the differing impact of the politics of Hindutva, which is essentially code for consolidating the Hindu vote by playing up the threat of Muslims, in different geographical settings is an example of that.
In Maharashtra, the “ek hain toh safe hain” — “we are safe if we are one”, a slogan which can, in polite company, be interpreted as a call for unity of all but in politics on the ground can be interpreted as a warning to Hindus that allowing caste divisions will create existential challenges from Muslims — appears to have worked to some extent. In his victory speech, Modi even doubled down on it. In UP, Yogi Adityanath’s “batenge toh katenge” was a call to polarise society. At the same time, the relentless effort to pit tribals against Muslims in Jharkhand failed spectacularly with the BJP getting wiped out in the tribal belt. Hindutva will remain the BJP’s go-to political platform, but it may work in some cases, and it may not work in other cases electorally. On the other side, the “secular parties” will continue to bank entirely on Muslim consolidation even as they seek to fragment Hindu votes by appealing to specific caste or regional identities. This formula too works in some cases, and doesn’t in other cases.
When and how religious consolidation works depends on the second variable which was once again in play on Saturday — the power of caste identities. If the Lok Sabha result reflected the national Opposition’s success in sowing seeds of doubt among backward communities, Dalits and tribals about the BJP’s commitment to reservation, the Maharashtra verdict is at least partly a result of the BJP’s ability to construct a wide multi-caste coalition, based on reassurances of representation and political voice to OBC subgroups and Marathas, a difficult balancing task given the contradictions between the two on their claims of reservation. The Jharkhand win for JMM-led alliance in turn is a reflection of the smart and wide caste and social alliance that non-BJP forces were able to build, inclusive of tribals, Dalits and backwards.
But if there is one lesson that all parties are going to take away from the results, it won’t be as much the strength of party organisations or even identity politics. It is the power of distributive schemes. India’s welfare model has now decisively shifted gears at two levels. One, the trend of direct cash transfers is now entrenched. Two, cash transfers to women is seen as a winner. It is hard to imagine the NDA reversing the political setback of the Lok Sabha results if it hadn’t introduced the cash transfer scheme in Maharashtra or the JMM winning without its own variant of the cash transfer scheme.
The good news is the Indian political system can see distress, it can see the gendered nature of the distress, and it has the political imagination and electoral imperative to offer help. The bad news is that the scale of distress remains deep, structural solutions to address distress are absent or limited, and payouts to specific demographic groups, at the cost of fiscal discipline, are becoming the preferred pathway for politicians. Indian democracy won again on Saturday, but whether it came closer to throwing up deeper answers for India’s real governance challenges is uncertain.
