In battle of permutations, Mahayuti's decisive blow

The Opposition coalition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) was decimated in the state elections, with its joint tally at 50

The ruling Mahayuti alliance cruised to a landslide victory in the Maharashtra assembly elections, winning 235 of the 288 seats, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) registering its best performance ever in the state by emerging as the single largest party after securing 132 seats.

The Mahayuti win crushed the opposition coalition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), whose joint tally was at 50, leaving it with scant opportunity to even claim the position of the leader of the Opposition in the assembly.

The BJP recorded the highest ever seats won by any party in the last 34 years; the undivided Congress had won 141 seats in 1990, when there was no strong opponent against it. At the height of the Modi wave in 2014, the BJP won 122 seats, which got depleted in 2019 to 105 seats.

The MVA, which was confident of making it to the halfway mark in the 288-seat house, stood decimated, with the Shiv Sena (UBT) bagging 20 seats, the NCP (SP) at 10 and the Congress getting 16, and others winning 4 seats. This was a sharp reversal of fortunes from the Lok Sabha elections six months ago when the MVA won 30 of 48 seats, while the Mahayuti won 17.