After the six-week long Lok Sabha Elections 2024, it’s time for political parties to gear up for assembly polls in five states scheduled over next two years. These five states include Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Delhi and Bihar.
Assembly elections in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir is also scheduled to be held later this year.
First Real Test
The most keenly watched assembly polls would, however, be Haryana and Maharashtra scheduled to be held around October 2024 – about four four months from now.
The elections would be first real test for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and INDIA bloc after the Lok Sabha polls.
Why do these states matter? Primarily because of two reasons. One, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is currently in power in both these states. Two, the NDA’s performance in both these states was below expectations in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha Elections 2024, the result of which was announced on June 4.
In Haryana, the BJP, which had won all ten seats in 2019, finished with just five seats in 2024 elections. The Congress party bagged five of ten seats from Haryana in 2024 general elections.
Likewise in Maharashtra, the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won 30 of the state’s 48 seats from the state. The ruling Mahayuti, a part of the NDA, bagged just 17 seats.
Lok Sabha Vs Assembly
In 2019, the NDA had won 43 of the 48 seats from Maharashtra while the then UPA Had bagged the remaining five seats.
Though voters chose differently in the Lok Sabha and Assembly Elections, the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections will have a bearing on the upcoming state assembly elections in these two states.
Maharashtra assembly has 288 members while Haryana has 90 members.
Congress resurgence in Haryana
In Haryana, where the Congress is showing a resurgence in its electoral fortunes, the BJP government led by Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini was in a crisis of sorts just before the Lok Sabha polls when three Independent MLAs withdrew their support from the ruling BJP in Haryana.
The BJP emerged as the single largest party and formed the government in a post-poll alliance with the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) and seven Independent MLAs in Haryana in 2019.
BJP leader Manohar Lal Khattar and JJP President Dushyant Chautala were sworn in as Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister respectively of BJP-JJP alliance government. Khattar has since resigned and is now a minister in Modi 3.0. Chautala left the alliance just before LS polls.
The Mahayuti crisis
In Maharashtra too, hours before the Modi 3.0 swearing-in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) turned down the BJP’s offer to accommodate party leader Praful Patel as a minister of state (MoS)with independent charge in the new government.
Patel, a member of the Ajit Pawar faction of NCP said accepting an MoS position would be a kind of demotion for him since he has been a cabinet minister before. This is a clear sign that all is not well within Mahayuti bloc in Maharashtra.