A triumphant Congress retained power in Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh in the first national popularity test following the Lok Sabha ballot of May, leaving a divided Opposition licking its wounds. In the most crucial of all three states, the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost the battle for power for a third time in a row and conceded defeat to the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance just four hours after the vote count started at 8 a.m. The Congress swept the 60-seat Arunachal Pradesh as widely expected but, contrary to what most pundits had predicted, managed only a slender win in Haryana, where it had been supremely confident of bagging two thirds of all seats in the 90-member legislature. Nevertheless, celebrations erupted outside Congress president Sonia Gandhi's house and the Congress headquarters in the heart of the Indian capital. Congress supporters set off firecrackers while others raised slogans and waved posters of Sonia Gandhi and her son and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi. In Mumbai, India's financial capital, Congress Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, who took charge of Maharashtra only after the November 2008 terror attack, said the Congress-NCP alliance would form a government again and his own party would be the single largest in the house. His statement came as the Congress put up a strong showing all across Maharashtra, eclipsing its own ally the NCP, while the BJP suffered a rout in comparison to its fighting ally the Shiv Sena. Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) put up an impressive show weaning away traditional Shiv Sena votes, as it did in the Lok Sabha election. Among the first victors in Maharashtra were Muslim cleric Maulana Mufti Ismail, who won from Malegaon, and MNS candidate Mangesh Sangle in Vikhroli (Mumbai northeast). The Malegaon winner is from the Jan Surajya Party of the Republican Left Democratic Front alliance of 18 parties. Shiv Sena stalwart and former Lok Sabha speaker Manohar Joshi as well as Maharashtra's BJP leaders accepted defeat saying they needed to ponder why they lost the Oct 13 assembly elections. State BJP secretary Vinod Tawade said the Shiv Sena and BJP would do a lot of “soul-searching”. But BJP leader Muqtar Abbas Naqvi struck a discordant note in New Delhi, blaming the electronic voting machines (EVMs) for its defeats, saying the EVMs had become “electronic victory machines” for the Congress. “It is a sponsored victory for the Congress.” The Congress had a simple majority in the 90-member Haryana legislature, with 40 seats. Only hours earlier, a seemingly overconfident Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had declared that the Congress could sweep the state and win a “two-third majority”. The Congress won 67 seats in the February 2005 elections. To Hooda's shock, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) fared much better than expected and was poised to win in nearly 25 constituencies. In contrast, the BJP, which broke its alliance with the INLD just before the elections, suffered a drubbing. BJP thinking about the road ahead The defeat of BJP, especially in Maharashtra and Haryana where it had been part of coalition governments earlier, has come as a severe blow to the party that is already reeling under the Lok Sabha debacle and serious internal discord. While BJP did not have much hope in Haryana, where its dumped its ally INLD and failed to cobble up an alliance with with Bhajan Lal's party HJC, the third consecutive assembly election loss in Maharashtra has thoroughly demoralised the party. In alliance with its oldest saffron friend, Shiv Sena, the party had hoped to retrieve some ground after the Lok Sabha debacle by capturing power in Maharashtra, pinning on anti-incumbency factor. But the Raj Thackerary-led MNS, the splinter group of Shiv Sena, again played the spoilsport for the Sena-BJP combine handing over victory to the Congress-NCP combine for a third consecutive term.
