Congress has faced one of its crushing defeats in Maharashtra as the result for the state assembly election was declared on Saturday. The grand old party-led Maha Vikas Akhadi (MVA) received only 49 against Mahayuti’s 235 seats out of the total 288 assembly constituency. The party-led alliance MVA also suffered as its major members, Shiv Sena UBT and NCP SP too, faced electoral debacles.

Notably, surprising many in the Congress camp, the poll outcome was completely against the popular perceptions in the state. Though the exit polls predicted victory to the BJP-led ruling Mahayuti alliance, many pinned their hopes in the recently held Lok Sabha election result, which made Congress the single largest party, winning 13 out of 48 parliamentary seats while the BJP received only nine seats.

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The other INDIA bloc members had also outperformed their rival factions back then. The saffron party has however managed to secure a remarkable 132 seats in the assembly elections, raising eyebrows of many in the opposition camp about the fairness of the election process.

The Congress had contested 101 constituencies and won mere 16 seats, and most of its high-profile candidates have also lost, that too for the large margin. Since 2004, the party, which had never fallen below 40 seats in state elections, faced its biggest electoral setback in Maharashtra. Potential chief ministerial candidates such as Balasaheb Thorat and former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan suffered defeats by big margins. Congress state chief Nana Patole retained his sitting seat, Sakoli, by a slim margin of around 200 votes.

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The defeat of Amit Deshmukh, the sitting MLA of Latur city, which the Congress leader has been representing since 2009, also surprised many. The rival BJP candidate, Arhchana Patil, could secure a significant victory margin against the Congress bigwig. There are several other influential Congress leaders who met with crushing defeats in the 2024 assembly election. However, the Congress leaders had expressed doubt over the electoral process while reacting to one of its worst defeats of the century.