News Brief
Nishtha Anushree
Jan 13, 2025, 11:03 AM | Updated 11:03 AM IST
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The Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) [NCP(SP)] has acknowledged the role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the Mahayuti's victory in the Maharashtra assembly election of November 2024.
During a recent gathering, the NCP(SP) chief Sharad Pawar highlighted the RSS's contribution to the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) campaign to his party members in Mumbai, the Indian Express reported.
Earlier, both the governing Mahayuti and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), of which NCP(SP) is a part, have emphasised the crucial part played by the RSS, the ideological source of the BJP, in the elections.
Pawar reportedly praised the RSS cadre’s strong loyalty and commitment to their ideology work and urged building a similarly strong and committed cadre that subscribes to the NCP(SP)'s ideology.
The NCP(SP) chief named Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and Dr B R Ambedkar as the ideologues of the party and said, "Even we should work to build such (RSS-like) cadre."
NCP(SP) leader Jitendra Awhad clarified that the praise does not mean the NCP(SP) or its leader endorses RSS ideology but they were simply discussing 'something which is good.'
"The RSS reference was in the context of the cadre’s commitment and loyalty," he clarified as the BJP emerged victorious in 132 out of the 149 seats it contested in the 2024 assembly election.
This was after Mahayuti's disappointing performance in the April-June 2024 Lok Sabha elections, where they secured only 17 out of Maharashtra's 48 seats, leading to RSS's involvement later in the year.
The BJP, in preparation for the subsequent Assembly elections, requested the RSS's assistance for its campaign. Devendra Fadnavis conducted multiple discussions with RSS leaders, amounting to over six meetings, to devise campaign strategies for both the BJP and the Mahayuti.
This included a plan to counteract the Opposition's "fake narratives". The outcome was a significant victory with the alliance securing 235 out of the 288 Assembly seats.
BJP's alliance partners, the Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde and the NCP led by Ajit Pawar, won 57 and 41 seats respectively in the assembly election. Subsequently, Fadnavis became the Chief Minister.
Nishtha Anushree is Senior Sub-editor at Swarajya. She tweets at @nishthaanushree.