ISAS Insights

The results of the latest Assembly elections in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Haryana have not come as a surprise. Given the performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the two states in the 2014 national election, it was expected that the BJP would emerge as the single largest party in both states. But the number of seats won by the party and the decimation of the Congress, which was in power in both Maharashtra and Haryana, surprised many. In Maharashtra, the BJP, which contested on its own for the first time in 25 years, won 123 seats in the 288-member Assembly, up from 46 seats in 2009; in Haryana the jump was even more dramatic for the BJP from 4 out of 90 seats in 2009 to 47 seats. The decline for the Congress was equally steep. In Maharashtra the Congress's seat tally nearly halved from 82 in 2009 to 42 while in Haryana it fell from 40 to 15.