MUMBAI: With MVA winning three of five MLC seats, all graduate constituencies, BJP’s hold over its once-strongholds has weakened sharply. The party now has just one MLC from the seven graduate constituencies in the legislative council.The council has 78 seats, of which seven each are reserved for graduates’ and teachers’ constituencies. NCP (SP) winning Pune and Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Congress taking Nagpur, leave BJP with only one graduate constituency MLC: Niranjan Davkhare from Konkan, who joined BJP from NCP in 2018.Graduate constituencies, particularly Nagpur, Pune and Mumbai, were once BJP bastions. Party stalwarts such as Nitin Gadkari, Prakash Javadekar, Chandrakant Patil and late Gangadharo Fadnavis, father of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, have won these elections.
“Graduates’ constituency MLC polls are important because they provide direct legislative representation to the educated population and serve as a key indicator of the political mood among urban, middle-class professionals. BJP has lost Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, the state’s three most important centres for educated professionals and cultural activity. This is a setback,” a political observer said.“Earlier, Congress was BJP’s principal rival in most constituencies. The BJP and RSS machinery took the initiative in voter registration, enrolling graduates on a large scale. Over 10 years the picture has changed. BJP’s dominance among graduates has been broken, and the opposition has gained ground across the six constituencies it does not hold. Konkan is the exception, where BJP’s representative is an NCP import,” he said.Mumbai, too, has moved away from BJP. Madhu Deolekar was the party’s graduate constituency MLC immediately before Shiv Sena’s Pramod Navalkar won the seat. It has remained a Sena (UBT) stronghold since.
