Maharashtra election results: Story behind 78 never-won seats

MUMBAI: They were the most crucial reason for the quarter century old Saffron alliance in Maharashtra to split. The BJP saw a huge untapped opportunity in them and the Shiv Sena, a buffer to keep its aggressively rising ally in check. Unusually better performance by the BJP in the contentious bunch of 78 seats—which both the alliance partners had failed to win even once before in previous elections—helped the party emerge as the single largest.

According to political research consultant Dr. Dinesh Thite, whose data was used by BJP for making its case with Sena, the BJP had failed to win 27 seats and Sena 65 even once from 1990 to 2004.

Extrapolating the changes in constituencies following the 2009 delimitation, BJP leader Eknath Khadse claimed there were 59 seats on which Sena did not even win once and for BJP, this number was 19. An unusually high number of these were across Western Maharashtra’s Satara , Kolhapur, Pune, Ahmednagar, Solapur and Sangli.