Mumbai: The victory margins of Shiv Sena-BJP candidates indicate that the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) of dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar and AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi may have damaged the prospects of the Congress-NCP alliance in eight Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra.
The saffron alliance won 41 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra. While the Congress won only one seat, NCP won four. The VBA, which contested all 48 seats in the state after alliance talks with the Congress failed, is likely to have eaten into the Congress-NCP votes in many places.
However, Mr Ambedkar denied the allegation, stating that the VBA had no role to play in the Sena-BJP victory. BJP president Raosaheb Danve said that the BJP had nothing to do with the VBA contesting all the seats. “We were doing our campaigning,” he said.
On his defeat from Solapur, Sushilkumar Shinde, former Union home minister, said, “VBA should introspect about whose side it is on.”
In eight seats — Akola, Buldhana, Gadchiroli-Chimur, Hatkanangale, Nanded, Parbhani, Sangli and Solapur — the victory margins of the BJP-Sena candidates were lower than the votes polled by VBA candidates.
In Hingoli, Latur, Yavatmal-Washim, Beed and Nashik, the contest could have been very close, had the VBA not been in the fray.
AIMIM's Imitiaz Jaleel, a journalist-turned-MLA, won from Aurangabad, defeating Shiv Sena's Chandrakant Khaire. But elsewhere, the VBA lost.
Mr Ambedkar contested from Akola and Solapur and lost from both constituencies.
