In Maharashtra, BJP’s pluses are its two terms at the Centre & a resource-rich campaign. Its problem is fashioning a state-level Hindutva-nativist narrative

Without invoking Bal Thackeray’s name, there is no Hindutva in Maharashtra. And that is exactly where the challenge lies for BJP, which has set its sight on the magic number of 400 seats — a parliamentary supermajority — for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Maharashtra is key to its ‘ab ki baar, 400 paar’ calculus, but the task of improving NDA’s 2019 score is daunting.
In 2019, BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won a neat 41 of Maharashtra’s 48 LS seats — BJP 23, Shiv Sena 18. With Shiv Sena’s split, Maharashtra has become an edge-of-the-seat battle, a crucial state that is a must-sweep for BJP, and not just for the numbers alone.