Dalit, tribal, Muslim votes helped MVA get 31 seats in Maharashtra
MVA won 31 seats in Maharashtra due to support from Muslim, Dalit, and tribal voters. BJP lost due to Muslim community's en bloc votes for opposition.
MUMBAI: The 31 seats won by the Maha Vikas Aghadi, the state’s opposition combine comprising the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (AP), was largely because the Muslim, Dalit and tribal votes went to them. A reading of Election Commission assembly constituency-wise data shows that most of the 29 assembly segments reserved for the scheduled castes, 24 segments for scheduled tribes and over 30 Muslim-dominated segments voted in favour of the MVA.
Of its 288 assembly segments, Maharashtra has over 30 with enough of a Muslim strength to decide the fate of candidates. Of the over 1.8 million Muslims registered as voters in the city, Mumbai’s Kurla, Mankhurd, Anushakti Nagar, Bandra East, Byculla, Mumbadevi and Malad West have a dominant Muslim population. In Mankhurd, over 75% of the votes went to Sena (UBT) candidate Sanjay Patil while in Mumbai South, the Sena (UBT)’s Arvind Sawant scored handsomely in the Muslim-dominated Byculla (86,883 votes to Sawant and 40,817 to the Shinde Sena’s Yamini Jadhav) and Mumbadevi (77,469 votes as opposed to Jadhav’s 36,690). The position was similar in other Muslim-dominated assembly segments in Mumbai.
In Beed assembly constituency, the BJP’s Pankaja Munde got 77,605 votes, while the NCP (SP) candidate got 1,39,917. In Malegaon Central, which is part of the Dhule Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress’ Shobha Bachhava got 1.99 lakh votes while the BJP candidate—former union minister Subhash Bhamare—got a mere 4,542. Parbhani city in the Parbhani Lok Sabha constituency saw the Sena (UBT) candidate scoring 1,08,374 votes while his opponent Mahadev Jankar (Mahayuti) got just 65,974. The Islampur segment of Hatkanangale voted in favour of the Sena (UBT)’s Satyajit Patil (76,425) over the Shinde Sena’s Dhairyasheel Mane (58,944).
Deputy chief minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis said on Saturday that the Muslim community had stood by the Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) wholeheartedly. “We lost our Dhule seat owing to the en bloc votes of Muslims to the opposition,” he said. “In Malegaon Central, we got only 2% of the vote while the Congress candidate got 1.98 lakh.”
Shabbir Ansari, president of the All India Muslim OBC Organisation, said that the Muslim community, which had distanced itself from the Congress in the last three decades, had now voted for it en masse. “We have at least 60 assembly constituencies where our community is substantial,” he said. “This time, Muslims voted en bloc for the Congress or its allies and ensured that the votes did not get split on account of voting for the Samajwadi Party, AIMIM or Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. The community was fearful of being targeted by the current dispensation and had made up its mind to vote against it. The awareness programmes for voting and voter registration played a pivotal role.”
Maharashtra has 24 reserved tribal constituencies in the tribal-dominated districts of Gadchiroli, Nandurbar, Nashik, Palghar and Amravati. Of these, 15 assembly constituencies voted in favour of the MVA while the remaining nine saw the ruling alliance scoring over the opposition. “In Gadchiroli and Nandurbar, tribal voters have clearly slid to the Congress,” said a tribal BJP leader. “The alleged change in the Constitution, and atrocities against tribals in Manipur made them switch from the BJP.”
The narrative that the BJP would change the Constitution if elected to power worked in favour of the opposition. In most of the 29 scheduled caste assembly segments, MVA candidates scored over the ruling alliance.