Election Results 2024: Two backroom boys steered BJP to victory in Maharashtra — Who are they?

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance, Mahayuti, cruised its way to a massive victory in the Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2024. The BJP bagged 132 of 148 seats it contested in the 2024 state polls. This is the first time since 1990 that a party would win more than 100 seats. 

Overall, the Mahayuti emerged victorious on 235 seats in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly. The MVA win 50 seats. A political party or an alliance must win 145 seats of the 288 in the Maharashtra Assembly.

The Mahayuti comprises the BJP, Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena, Ajit Pawar's NCP, JSS, RSVA, and RYSP. The MVA has the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena (UBT), and Sharad Pawar's NCP-SP and PWPI as constituents.

The backroom boys

Amid Mahayuti's anticipated landslide win, the names of two Union ministers are doing the rounds as key players who orchestrated the landslide. They are believed to be the "architects" of the BJP's massive victory in the Maharashtra polls. Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also thanked them during his press conference on Saturday.

The two leaders were Bhupender Yadav and Ashwini Vaishnaw. They were in charge and co-incharge, respectively, of the Maharashtra electionS for the BJP. They were appointed soon after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) victory in the Lok Sabha Elections 2024.

Bhupender Yadav and Ashwini Vaishnaw have worked extensively behind the scenes to take the BJP to the grass-root level, away from the limelight. According to reports, when Union Home Minister Amit Shah released the BJP manifesto in Mumbai on November 10, the two senior leaders sat in the audience.

The challenge

In the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections held in June this year, the BJP faced a major setback by winning just nine of the 38 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, while its rival, the Congress, emerged as single-largest party with 13 seats.

This upset the Mahayuti, which was already in power in the state, and also posed a big challenge for the alliance in the Maharashtra Assembly Elections held in November.

Bhupender Yadav and Ashwini Vaishnaw seem to have successfully overcome this challenge. The two union ministers have also been credited for leading the BJP to victory in Madhya Pradesh last year.

Who are Bhupender Yadav and Ashwini Vaishnaw

Bhupendra Yadav is considered a close aide of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Yadav, who is a BJP leader from Rajasthan, has a good hold in several other states, including Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

Yadav was BJP’s election co-in-charge for the Assembly polls of Rajasthan (2013) and Jharkhand (2014) and in-charge for Gujarat. He was the in-charge for the 2019 Lok Sabha election and 2020 Bihar Legislative Assembly elections. This is the first time that he took charge of a western state like Maharashtra and led the party to victory.

Yadav is currently the Union Cabinet Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change. He is a Member of Parliament from the Lok Sabha constituency of Alwar, and was Rajya Sabha MP from 2012.

Ashwini Vaishnaw is currently the Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting, Electronics and Information Technology. He has a Master’s in Technology from IIT Kanpur and MBA from Wharton.

Vaishnaw brings a combination of skills in technology, finance and its application to weakest sections of society. He firmly believes in the philosophy of ‘Antyodaya’, i.e. transforming the lives of the marginalized sections of society, as its profile on Government of India's website reads.

The setback

Though the BJP celebrated its win in Maharashtra, the party is likely to suffer a setback in the Jharkhand Assembly Elections 2024. This may come as a shock to former Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Assam CM Himanta Hiswa Sarma, who were in charge of the elections there.