Heir-Borne Battle

Modi’s acceptability remains high even where voters find the BJP’s quest for power at any cost offensive, but the Maha Vikas Aghadi clearly has its tail up. The mood and moves on the ground...

- KAVITHA IYER

There was not ever a sliver of doubt about how the BJP views its Lok Sabha campaign in Maharashtra. With a ‘400 paar’ target for the NDA, these 48 seats—next only to Uttar Pradesh’s 80—are a vital hunting ground. That the BJP was approaching its target of 40 Lok Sabha seats from Maharashtra in a brutally clinical manner became increasingly apparent as the second phase of polling concluded.

High-profile crossings of the aisle—former Union minister Milind Deora, former chief minister Ashok Chavan among them—have now been matched by unsentimental exclusions from the candidates list.

The BJP’s laboratory of experiments, which tests the limits of democratic systems, has returned to the hustings. One early conclusion: for the BJP, frustratingly, the Ajit Pawar and Eknath Shinde factions’ messaging is out-of-sync with the BJP’s thrust to return Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a third term. They spend precious campaign minutes on tales of betrayal and family sagas, a dissonance appearing almost geared towards state assembly elections later in the year.

As the battle hots up, THE WEEK takes a close look at five crucial constituencies in the state:

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: Maratha vote is key

In January, a month before he took his life, Manikrao Anant Godse, 38, was on the outskirts of Mumbai, braving the heat and dust of a two lakh-strong protest. Along with Sainath More—his neighbour from their village Babhulgaon Budruk in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar’s Sillod block—he camped outdoors through the five-day journey and shouted slogans demanding reservations for Marathas in higher education and jobs.