Mumbai: The Maharashtra Assembly elections are in the offing and state politics has become even more bitterly contested with parties mobilising all the tactics available to them. While the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance is being cautious after the Haryana assembly poll results, the BJP leading the Mahayuti (Grand Alliance) is sparing no efforts.
Seen in the contest between the Shiv Sena, the NCP, Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, and Ajit Pawar is a creation of the ‘real vs fake’ storyline during this election season. However, the big question remains: Who will be the CM if any of these alliances succeeds?
A latest survey done by Lokniti-CSDS brings out some shocking facts over the preference of candidates for the CM post.
It was the erudite Uddhav Thackeray who lead the popularity contest Among all the opponents who fought with their flopw Sheets upto the eleventh hour the allied oppositon had the maximum number of candidates occupying the seven principal berths.
Speaking of the results of the survey, it is necessary to state that Uddhav Thackeray successfully became the symbol of the forthcoming Chief Minister with the support of 28 percent of the participants. Incumbent Chief Minister Eknath Shinde gained the second place with the 20% votes of the respondents, whereas former CM Devendra Fadnavis was preferred by the 16% respondents.
Unfortunately, the poll was not going well for the NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, he only got 8% of total votes though he is a very prominent politician of India. Ajit Pawar another contender too received even less popularity with 3% of respondents who considered him as popular CM candidate.
The Real vs Fake battle is practically insignificant
From the survey it is observed that the fight between Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde over who actually stands for the real party Shiv Sena has had no impact on the public. Even the leading ones in the category Uddhav, Shinde or Fadnavis are not in a commanding position and it is an open battle.
Also worthy of note is that even if total popularities of Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar are summed up, the overall popularities of MVA is still below the total popularities of Mahayuti candidates.
MVA vs Mahayuti: A Close Fight Looms
As for the total support for the alliances, the Maha Vikas Aghadi has the approval of the 36% of respondents, while the Mahayuti has the 39%. Political experts have regard it as suggesting that the race will be hotly contested during the election year, and there will not be walk-over candidate.
Albeit the MVA has not declared the official CM candidate yet, the Mahayuti has put Eknath Shinde in CM candidate list who is the incumbent CM . However, it is still unclear whether this will be different after the election or not.
Maharashtra – What is in Store for the Future?
The next assembly elections in Maharashtra are expected to be one of the most clearly contested ones, with all attention drawn toward the main contenders for the post of Chief Minister. While Uddhav Thackeray has been establishing himself as the most popular leader of current Maharashtra political arena, Mahayuti in general is slightly ahead of Maha Vikas Aghadi over all, as we head into the next few months of political brinkmanship.