New Delhi: For a start, by going solo. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) contested only 119 seats in 2009, when it was in alliance with the Shiv Sena. This time the party decided to go it alone, contesting 257 seats across the state. The decision to break its 25-year-old alliance with the Shiv Sena was described as a calculated gamble, but results show the gamble seems to have paid off. The party managed to win 122 seats in the 288-member assembly—the first time since 1990 that any party has secured a tally of over 100 seats in the state.

The BJP surged past other parties in the fray by consolidating its existing votebank and breaching significant new frontiers.

One of the key highlights of the BJP’s success in Maharashtra has been its consolidation in the state’s urban parts. In the Golden Triangle, a part of the state comprising the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune and Nashik, the BJP won 36 out of the 77 seats on offer. The Golden Triangle is considered to be one of the most urbanized parts of not just Maharashtra, but all of India. In Mumbai alone, with a considerable consolidation of the non-Marathi vote (North Indian and Gujarati), the party finished on top with 15 seats, ahead of the Shiv Sena (14).

In the Marathi-dominated Thane-Konkan region, the BJP managed a total of 11 seats out of a possible 39, despite the tally being a significant improvement from its previous showings. In Konkan, it managed to win only one seat, while in Thane district, it won 10. The biggest victory for the party in this region came in Thane City, where its candidate Sanjay Kelkar defeated the Shiv Sena’s Ravindra Pathak to wrest the seat from its former ally.

The BJP also made significant inroads into western Maharashtra, considered to be a critical region on the road to the Mantralaya, the administrative headquarters of the state government of Maharashtra.

The region, known for its sugar barons and Maratha political heavyweights, was once a Congress and later Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) bastion, with Sharad Pawar commanding considerable influence over the politics of western Maharashtra. The BJP’s tally in the region totalled 19, finishing above the NCP, which managed 16 seats. The Congress managed to hang on to some of its seats in the region, winning 12. The BJP swept the urban areas of the region, Pune and adjoining Pimpri-Chinchwad, where it won all eight seats. The party also gained a seat in Kolhapur.

In Khandesh, or northern Maharashtra, which consists of Nashik and Jalgaon among other districts, the BJP again came out on top, winning 19 out of the 47 seats on offer, a seven-seat gain from 2009 when it won 12 seats. The region is also home to the onion belt of Maharashtra, including two of India’s biggest onion markets at Pimpalgaon and Lasalgaon. The BJP’s surge in this region could be attributed to the growing disenchantment of onion farmers with the policies of the NCP, which along with the Congress, controls these mandis. This, along with the Modi wave in urban Maharashtra, helped the BJP sweep urban Nashik, where it took all three seats from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Even in Jalgaon district, which is home to senior state BJP leader Eknath Khadse, the BJP wrested three seats from the NCP.

Vidarbha is considered a growth area for the BJP, with many of its senior leaders such as Nitin Gadkari, Sudhir Mungantiwar and Devendra Fadnavis hailing from the region. The BJP’s consolidation in Vidarbha is attributed to its strong performance at the grass-roots level, where it has consistently won local body elections (zilla parishads, gram panchayats and municipal corporations and councils) over the last two decades.

In 2014, the party put up its best performance in the region since 1995 (when it won 22 seats), almost doubling the tally to 43 out of the 62 seats on offer. The sheer domination of the BJP in the region is highlighted by its showing in Nagpur, where it not only swept the city by winning all five seats, but also won five out of six seats in rural Nagpur. Even in other parts of the region like Yavatmal, Wardha and Amravati, the BJP has only strengthened its position.

The other ‘growth area’ for the BJP has been Marathwada, a former Congress bastion. Last time around, when it was in alliance with the Shiv Sena, the party could only manage two seats in the region. Going solo, the BJP has significantly upped its tally to 15 seats, again coming on top in the region. The gradual rise of the party in Marathwada could be attributed to Gopinath Munde and Pramod Mahajan, its late mass leaders who belonged to the region. This time around, Pankaja, Munde’s daughter, was projected as the BJP’s face in Marathwada before the elections, following a Sangharsh Yatra she undertook across the region to consolidate the party’s appeal.

The only disappointment for the BJP, if any, would be the dismal performance of its alliance partners, whose strength it seems to have overestimated. Out of the 31 seats allotted to smaller, sub-regional parties, only the Rashtriya Samaj Paksha (RSP) managed to win only one seat, in Daund.

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