Lessons from the Maharashtra Civic Polls: Why Progressives Need to Urgently Focus on the Booth |
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After a six-year delay, the Maharashtra state election commission notified the local body polls in the state only after the intervention of the Supreme Court last year. The elections were held between December 2025 and February 2026. In addition to this delay and alleged misappropriation of funds, the Mahayuti government, with the willing consent of the Election Commission, further complicated matters by gerrymandering constituencies, merging four constituencies into one, requiring each party to field a panel of four candidates.
Since such polls are hyper-localised, this move meant that voters did not know all candidates, and parties with the most resources were best placed to showcase their panels effectively. This capital-intensive campaign naturally benefited the Mahayuti government (comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) and the Nationalist Congress Party (led by late Ajit Pawar)).
Despite this, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) put up a brave and spirited campaign. In 29 municipal corporation elections, the Congress party won 324 seats, the Shiv Sena (UBT) won 154, and the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) won 36. It is now increasingly clear that the Congress party has emerged as the principal opposition party against the BJP (which won 1425 out of the total 2869 seats across Maharashtra).
Although it will be an uphill battle, the Congress party is well positioned to grow by the next round of elections in 2029, especially given any anti-incumbency and progressive vote would invariably gravitate towards a strong alternative. Given this possibility, a detailed SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis comparing the Congress and the BJP campaigns in Maharashtra is needed. This analysis is limited to the Kolhapur district, which has 81 municipal seats, 67 zilla parishad seats and 12 panchayat samitis, comprising 134 panchayat samiti wards in total.
Juxtaposing Congress’s and BJP’s campaigns
Under the stewardship of legislative council leader and Kolhapur district president Satej Bunty Patil, the Congress party prepared a forward-looking manifesto, and conducted over 20 sabhas (rallies) for the municipal polls and over 40 sabhas for the zilla parishad polls. Their campaign was people-centric, the main slogan was “Kolhapur Kasa, Tumhi Mhanal Tasa” (Kolhapur will be what you say it should be like), and consciously eschewed any negative campaigning. Numerous progressive thinkers, professionals and activists were roped in for the campaign, and it genuinely felt like everyone was working to forge a better Kolhapur.
In stark contrast, the BJP in Kolhapur did not prepare a manifesto, was excessively reliant on negative campaigning and did not focus on large sabhas. It propagated negative narratives through dogmatic repetition of two meta-narratives – a) the nation, Hindus and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi are under threat (from both internal and external forces), and hence there’s a need for a triple-engine Sarkar for securing vikaas (development), which they had long promised and b) the Congress party only works to enrich its dynasts, did not do anything for 60 years; they mostly caricatured Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.
In fact, Prime Minister Modi and home minister Amit Shah’s speeches (both in parliament and when the latter came to campaign in Maharashtra for the local body polls) were actively leveraged as toolkits by BJP workers (which suggests that perhaps the BJP’s top leadership isn’t particularly concerned about speaking about facts, logic or even the national interest and are instead consciously arming their workers with narratives).
Even the Samvidhan Bachao (Save constitution) campaign and narrative spearheaded by Gandhi has been successfully countered by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS’s) Sajag Raho Abhiyan (Stay Vigilant Campaign). Organised every Saturday in colonies, Sajag Raho only focuses on marshalling the age groups of 15-18 (first time voters) and 60 onwards (the retired).
Camouflaged through religio-cultural activities like Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s Aarti (prayers) and Ram Raksha pravachans (Save Lord Ram lectures), these are designed to collectivise local communities, where the local RSS shakha ram home the point that Hindu society and........