Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2024 | RSS working over-time to help BJP after Lok Sabha poll debacle

Nagpur: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the fountainhead of the Sangh parivar, is working round-the-clock to help the BJP make significant gains in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly elections in the wake of the drubbing that the saffron party got in the state during the Lok Sabha polls.

In August, a couple of months before the announcement of Vidhan Sabha polls, the RSS had appointed Atul Limaye, the Joint General Secretary (sah-sarkaryavah) and the third-highest ranking member in the RSS hierarchy, as a coordinator for Maharashtra.

Since then, Limaye has held several meetings with the state BJP leadership in Nagpur, Mumbai and Pune.

When the BJP’s seats were reduced to nine in the 2024 polls from the earlier tally of 23 that it won in 2014 and 2019, alarm bells rang out in the RSS headquarters in Nagpur.

“A lot of meetings were held and things are in motion,” informed sources said, commenting on the saffron party's strategy for the upcoming polls.

Incidentally, BJP veteran Nitin Gadkari, who is the Road Transport and Highways Minister in the Narendra Modi-led Union government, Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is a two-time former Chief Minister and ex-Leader of the Opposition, hail from Nagpur. State BJP President Chandrashekhar Bawankule too hails from Nagpur, where the RSS is headquartered.

It is also pertinent to note that while the RSS-BJP workers on the grounds have accepted the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, the same is not the case with the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, with articles in Sangh-parivar linked publications Organiser and Vivek blaming Ajit Pawar for BJP's poor performance in Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha polls.

According to sources, RSS volunteers are engaged in a public outreach and the response has been good. “The RSS and Sangh-parivar organisations like VHP and Bajrang Dal have worked extensively in Haryana and are working in Maharashtra too,” sources told DH.

After the LS poll debacle in Maharashtra, Fadnavis took the responsibility and offered to resign from the government and work for the party. However, this offer was squarely rejected by the BJP high-command and rather, the focus was to regain lost ground in the state polls.

The Maratha reservation demand, the OBC resistance and the politics around it had hit the BJP and the Maha Yuti hard during theLS polls, when people turned to the Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi and its allies, the Uddhav Thackeray-headed Shiv Sena (UBT) and Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP).

However, since then, the BJP is understood to have done a considerable amount of groundwork to neutralise its decline in Maharashtra. The slew of schemes announced by the outgoing government, including the Ladki Bahin Yojana, are expected to give the Maha Yuti some leverage in the state polls.

Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls will take place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP will be going up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress try to make their mark. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faces a new challenge after Hemant Soren's recent arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP. The Haryana election resulted in a shock loss for Congress, which was looking to galvanize on the Lok Sabha poll performance, while J&K also saw the grand old party eventually stepping away from the cabinet, with Omar Abdullah's JKNC forming government. It remains to be seen if the upcoming polls help BJP cement its position further or provide a fillip to I.N.D.I.A. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.

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