BJP leader from Marathwada blames Ajit Pawar’s NCP for poll slump

Ties between the ruling BJP in Maharashtra and its Mahayuti ally, the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction, are at a new low after a senior BJP leader from Marathwada, Suresh Dhas, declared in public that the alliance with the NCP had cost the BJP heavily in the Lok Sabha election.

Speaking in Pune on Friday, Mr. Dhas, a former three-term MLA from Ashti in Beed district who was with the undivided NCP until 2018, claimed that the inclusion of an “ideologically dissimilar party” (alluding to Ajit Pawar’s NCP) into the ruling Mahayuti’s fold was not a popular decision. Until then it had comprised the Shiv Sena lead by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the BJP.

“The prime reason for the BJP’s defeat in the Lok Sabha election is that a third party was allowed into the Mahayuti. The public clearly did not accept it. For the last 28 years, the Shiv Sena and the BJP have had a natural alliance. The people liked that. They accepted Mr. Shinde’s revolt [in June 2022] when he joined hands with us. But the entry of this new party [Ajit Pawar’s NCP] queered the pitch,” said Mr. Dhas, currently a legislator in the Maharashtra Legislative Council (MLC).

Prime reason for loss

While the BJP won only nine of the 29 seats it contested, the Mahayuti alliance secured a mere 17 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the State. The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won 31 seats.

Mr. Dhas said the sudden swearing-in ceremony last year in July, when Ajit Pawar split the NCP led by his uncle Sharad Pawar to align with the Mahayuti, was not accepted by BJP rank-and-file workers either.

“Till yesterday, BJP activists had been fighting tooth and nail against the NCP, especially against Ajit Pawar. And now, they were being asked to contest elections alongside NCP cadre. The ordinary voter who stood by the BJP was disaffected this time,” he said.

Commenting on the Beed Lok Sabha contest in which the BJP’s Pankaja Munde lost narrowly to Bajrang Sonawane of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP), Mr. Dhas claimed that the rank-and-file NCP workers of the Ajit Pawar faction never worked wholeheartedly for Ms. Munde.

‘Rank-and-file mutiny’

“They were campaigning for Sonawane right from the first day. They in effect became the agents of tutari [symbol of the Sharad Pawar faction],” Mr. Dhas said.

He said he was not “big enough” to speak out on which party ought to be removed from the Mahayuti coalition.

“I am not the only one expressing such sentiments. It was the RSS that first ascribed the BJP’s defeat to Ajit Pawar’s NCP through an article in their mouthpiece, The Organiser,” Mr. Dhas said, while adding that the ordinary BJP worker was extremely disgruntled about the NCP.

This comes a day after Sudarshan Choudhari, the BJP’s Pune District vice-president and a director of the Pune Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC), strongly urged the BJP leadership to sever ties with Ajit Pawar’s NCP ahead of the Assembly election.