Maharashtra Assembly election results: Big setbacks

The Mahayuti alliance made a triumphant comeback in the 2024 assembly elections, trouncing rivals Maha Vikas Aghadi in a face-off that didn't exactly live up to the pre-poll hype. The trends became clear and entreched in favour of the ruling dispensation by mid-day, and the gap between the two sides only steadily increased as the day wore on.

The Maharashtra results threw up both big winners and losers in equal numbers. If on the one hand the bigshots of Mahayuti became even bigger political figures, a good many leaders suffered major jolts to their reputations on the other. Here's a look at a few of those who seem to have suffered big setbacks.

Uddhav Thackeray

The reputational loss for Uddav Thackeray was quite severe, probably even bigger than his political loss. The electorate's unambiguous message was a huge blow for Sena-UBT supremo who was fighting not just to regain power but also for political survival in a fast-changing political scenario in Maharashtra.


Now that voters have rejected Uddhav's claim to the 'true' legacy of Shiv Sena, whether or not he can make a political comeback in times to come is anybody's guess.

Sharad Pawar

Sharad Pawar's loss -- reputational as well as political -- was no smaller than that of Uddhav Thackeray.

Voters rejected Pawar's efforts to reclaim the NCP legacy, which his nephew Ajit had taken away when the NCP was vertically split following the infamous rebellion.

What will hurt the 'wily old fox' even more is that Ajit Pawar's faction left his faction behind by a big margin.

It was a major fall from grace for Pawar whose faction came up with a good show at the 2024 general elections.

Congress party

This is a kind of a same old story for Congress, whose story of recent travails seems to have continued.

In the Maharashtra elections, the Congress party again failed to make any noticeable impact. Still smarting from the Haryana loss, it repeated its poor record in Maharashtra.

Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi, the party's most prominent face, also failed to make any impact, adding another lap to his sorry electoral run.

This will be particularly galling for the Congress leader given the fact that BJP was fighting anti-incumbency in Maharashtra in a major way.