Maharashtra, UP, Rajasthan, Bihar: How ‘Super Saturday’ changes the script for BJP beyond just numbers

The BJP bagged 132 of the 148 seats it contested in the Maharashtra elections. (File photo: PTI)

Barely six months after suffering its worst setback in a decade in the Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday managed to pull off a remarkable comeback, firmly placing the party back in the driver's seat.

The win in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, coupled with victories in the bypolls held in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan, come on the back of the surprise it pulled off in Haryana and hold immense importance for the BJP beyond just the numbers.

This is primarily because it was the party's tally in these four states that were primarily responsible for the BJP's diminished tally in the Lok Sabha polls and deprived it of winning a clear majority in the Lower House. UP, Maharashtra and Rajasthan cumulatively accounted for 58 of the 63 seats that the BJP lost compared to its 2019 tally.

The BJP's Lok Sabha tally in the 2024 polls dropped to 240 from 303 in 2019, forcing it to bank on allies like Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party and Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) to form a government at the Centre.

In UP, the BJP saw its tally drop from 62 to 33, in Maharashtra from 23 to 9 and from 24 to 14 in Rajasthan .In Bihar, the BJP's seats dropped from 17 to 12 seats in the Lok Sabha while the party lost the remaining five seats from Haryana.

In effect, the BJP has bounced back in all states where it saw reversals in the Lok Sabha elections this year, and have ben crucial in keeping the BJP in power in the post-2014 era of national politics.

The victories in these key states on Saturday is important for the BJP beyond the numbers. The huge drop in the party's tally in the Lok Sabha had triggered a narrative that the BJP was on a decline and that it was well past its peak now and that the Congress, which had doubled its tally since 2019, finally had a real shot at returning to power in alliance with other Opposition parties.

However, the victories registered by the BJP in the Maharashtra Assembly polls and byelections across key states have flipped the narrative and firmly placed the BJP back in the driver's seat.

In UP, for instance, the BJP-RLD bagged seven of the 9 seats where byelections were held while the Samajwadi Party, upbeat after its improved performance in the Lok Sabha polls, was limited to just two seats of Karhal and Sisamau. The BJP, on the other hand, won Katehari, Kundarki, Ghaziabad, Majhawan, Khair and Phulpur, while its alliance partner RLD won Meerapur.

The Kundarki win proved to be a setback for the SP in particular as the constituency elected the BJP candidate despite 60 per cent of its population comprising Muslims. The seat was seen as a stronghold of the SP and Mayawati's BSP for decades in UP. The victory in Katehari was equally significant since the BJP won the seat for the first time since 1991.

In Rajasthan, where the BJP is in a direct contest with the Congress, it bagged five of the 7 Assembly seats that went to polls while its former ally Bharat Adivasi Party won one seat. Dausa, which Congress won by a margin of just 2,300 votes, was its solitary win in the state.

Just a year ahead of Assembly polls in Bihar, the NDA bagged all four seats that went to polls, with the BJP winning Tarari and Ramgarh and the HAM and JD(U) snatching the Imamganj and Belaganj strongholds of the RJD.