Farm labour, Dalits, urban poor desert Cong in Maharashtra

The double anti-incumbency against the Centre and state government in Maharashtra, where there has been a Congress-NCP regime since 1999, appears to be crippling the Congress’s prospects in one of the largest states in the country, which sends 48 MPs to Parliament. Even Vidarbha, a traditional Congress bastion, is leaning towards the Bharatiya Janata Party “by a wide margin”, according to the the findings of the Lokniti, CSDS-IBN national pre-poll survey. [caption id=“attachment_1150557” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan with NCP minister Jayant Patil. PTI[/caption] The estimated vote share of the Congress-NCP combine in the state has continued to dip in consecutive surveys. While the vote share of the ruling combine was 38.9 percent in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the Lokniti survey in February 2014 saw this dip to 36 percent, and is now down to 33 percent as per the March survey. The BJP-Shiv Sena combine has seen a simultaneous rise in popularity, going from 37.8 percent vote share in the 2009 elections to an estimated 42 percent in the February survey by Lokniti and 43 percent in March. AAP and the BSP’s estimated vote share remain unchanged since the February survey, with a 5 percent and 4 percent share each. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, interestingly, has seen a decline in estimated vote share from 4.1 percent in the 2009 election to 4 per cent in the February estimates and 3 percent in March. The Congress will also be rueing its apparent loss of favour among all caste groups. While the BJP and its allies are leading comfortably, as expected, in popularity levels with the upper castes and the OBCs, the Congress is struggling to maintain its hold on the SC/ST vote. Forty percent of Marathas, 58 percent of other upper castes and 49 percent of OBCs said they would vote for the BJP or its allies. Among SCs, an equal percentage of respondents (32 percent) picked the BJP and the Congress. Among STs, the Congress had a marginal edge - 43 percent to the BJP’s 39 percent. This indicates that the ‘Mahayuti’, or grand alliance, that the Sena-BJP stitched together with Ramdas Athavale’s RPI (A) during the municipal body elections of 2012 has bled some of the Congress’s Dalit votes. Athavale may not have a Mayawati’s mass following, but he remains an important Dalit leader, and his is easily Maharashtra’s most important RPI faction. The Congress will also not be relying on rural votes, it appears, as the survey data suggests that a significantly large percentage of farmers will vote for the BJP and its allies, as much as 43 percent to the 29 percent who said they would vote for the Congress. The Congress holds an egde among agricultural labourers, but only just, at 45 percent, while 42 percent of this class prefer the BJP or Sena. So, is anybody voting for the Congress/ NCP at all? There is only one group that the survey found to be comprehensively with the Congress-NCP. That is the Muslim vote in Maharashtra, decisively with the Congress at 84 percent