Union Minister Piyush Goyal has dismissed the possibility of any leadership change in Maharashtra following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) underwhelming performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. He said that the party is focusing on a strategy to ensure the success of the Shiv Sena-BJP-NCP coalition in the assembly elections later this year.
Speculation was rife that BJP leader Raosaheb Patil might be appointed as the state president amid questions about the continued alliance with the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
However, Goyal clarified, “There will be no change in leadership in Maharashtra.” He made this announcement after a core group meeting of the Maharashtra BJP with party president JP Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi on Tuesday.
BJP leaders such as BL Santosh, Bhupender Yadav, Ashwini Vaishnaw, state BJP leader Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Chandrakant Patil, Pankaja Munde, Raosaheb Danve, and Vinod Tawde were also part of this meeting.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won only nine seats in Maharashtra, a dramatic drop from the 23 seats it won in 2019. The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance had secured 41 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra in the 2019 elections. This number for the current National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fell to 17 seats – with seven for the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and one for the NCP led by Ajit Pawar. The INDIA bloc, on the other hand, won 30 seats this time.
Following the Lok Sabha drubbing, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis offered to resign from the MahaYuti government (comprising Shiv Sena, BJP, and NCP) to concentrate on the assembly elections.
“We have prepared a blueprint for the upcoming assembly elections and how to win it along with the MahaYuti alliance partners,” Fadnavis stated after the meeting.
He also said the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections was also discussed during the meeting at the BJP headquarters. The Maharashtra Deputy CM highlighted that the vote share difference between the ruling MahaYuti and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) was a mere 0.3 percent.
In the last assembly elections, the NCP and Congress contested together and won 98 seats, while the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance secured 161 out of 288 seats. However, disagreements over the Chief Minister’s post led Shiv Sena, which had 56 seats, to form a government with Congress and NCP as part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance.
