Mumbai: Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has set “Mission 45” to win 45 out of 48 Lok Sabha seats from the state in the 2024 elections. The party’s plan also includes winning 16 seats it has never been able to win, including Baramati, the bastion of the Pawar family. BJP is hoping to pull off a surprise like Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, where BJP nominee Smriti Irani defeated Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
As a part of the Mission, union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will visit Baramati, which has been held by Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and his daughter since 1996 and never been won by BJP since independence.
The BJP has also identified 16 constituencies in which either the party stood second or has fair chances of winning them. The 16 constituencies include Shirur, Kolhapur, Hatkanagale, Shirdi and Satara in western Maharashtra; Nanded, Osmanabad and Aurangabad in Marathwada; South Mumbai, Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg in Konkan. The party is expected to depute more union ministers or national leaders to visit some of the constituencies in the coming future.
BJP, along with its traditional ally Shiv Sena, had won 41 of 48 seats in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. From the opposition front, NCP could retain four seats in both the polls, while Congress had been reduced to just 2 seats in 2014 and only one in 2019.
“The mission was chalked out way ahead of the Shiv Sena split in June this year and under the assumption that we are going solo in the next elections. However, it will now be achieved with the Sena led by Shinde. We may not have to concede as many seats given to Sena in the last two elections to the Shinde camp making it easier for us to achieve the target. In some constituencies like South Mumbai, BJP can contest the seat though it has traditionally been conceded to Sena for decades. Similarly in Palghar and Satara, BJP had given candidates and all support helping Sena to win. Swabhimani Paksha chief could win in 2014 from Hatkanagale (Kolhapur) when he was with us but lost in 2019 after parting ways. We have strength there in these constituencies,” said a senior BJP leader.
He said that though the names of the union leaders to campaign in the state have not been finalized, prominent faces will be deployed for the job. “Baramati is one of the constituencies which has been shortlisted by central agencies for their political significance. By defeating Congress’s former president Rahul Gandhi from Amethi in 2019, the party sent out a strong message across the country. The central leadership wants the loud and clear message from Baramati this time,” said a former minister.
Insiders also believe that the party depends hugely on Maharashtra to return to power for the third time in 2024 as the state has the second highest number of seats in the country. By winning more than 85% of seats in the last two LS polls, Maharashtra had played a key role in bringing the party to power.
BJP insiders also believe that achieving it in 2024 in Baramati could be easier as Pawar perhaps may not be as active in campaigning as he was in earlier elections.
Prakash Pawar, a political analyst from Kolhapur said, “Wresting Baramati from NCP would not be easy for the saffron party as the constituency has the dominance of shepherd (dhangar) and Mali community. Ajit Pawar manages the caste politics well during the polls. Besides, BJP may have a fair chance of getting more seats in Western Maharashtra than in Marathwada as the joint strength of NCP and Sena may keep BJP at the bay. With the new political equations emerging after the split in Sena, the BJP’s mission depends on how Shinde camp sustains until Lok Sabha elections.”
The party, on one hand, plans to cultivate the constituencies and another hand keeps the option of poaching the winnable candidates from other parties, open to winning. “There are big names from the opposition that are ready to change sides, but it will happen ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Our endeavour however would be to bank on the agenda of Hindutva and centrally sponsored schemes of the Modi government that worked western Maharashtra during Pandharpur and Kolhapur North Assembly bypolls in May 2021 and April 2022, respectively. Pandharpur won, while in Kolhapur bypoll our vote share increased from 40,000 to 78,000,” a leader handling organisational affairs said.
BJP leader and former state unit chief Chandrakant Patil said, “We have started preparing to achieve the mission, but it will be too early to speak about it. Our new state president Chandrashekhar Bawankule has extensively toured Maharashtra for more than a year working towards the mission. With him at the helm of affairs, we are confident about achieving it.”
