Out of 288 assembly seats, Bharatiya Janata Party has won 132, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena has won 57 and Ajit Pawar’s NCP has won 41 seats.
Analysts believe that the biggest reason behind this ‘unexpected victory’ is the ‘Chief Minister- Meri Ladli Behan’ scheme in Maharashtra.
The Mahayuti government of Maharashtra had started this scheme in the month of June this year.
Under this scheme, eligible women are being given Rs 1500 every month.
There are about two crore beneficiary women in the state. According to analysts, this class has worked to bring the ‘Mahayuti’ government to power.
The Mahayuti government had announced the Chief Minister Ladli Behan Yojana in its budget.
After the announcement of the scheme, it was repeatedly said by the Mahayuti government that it would prove to be very important in the assembly elections.
Because before this, the BJP had started the ‘Laadli Behan Yojana’ in Madhya Pradesh in the year 2023.
The then Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had then opened accounts of more than one crore women to mobilize women voters.
The Madhya Pradesh government had started transferring an amount of Rs 1000 per month to the accounts of women between the ages of 23 to 60 years. However, now this amount has been increased by the state government.
After forming the government in Madhya Pradesh, the BJP also implemented it in Maharashtra.
Senior journalist Sudhir Suryavanshi believes that the ‘Mukhyamantri- Meri Ladli Behan’ scheme has worked to reduce the anger against the government among the common people.
He says, “After the Lok Sabha elections, there was a lot of anger among the farmers as well as the common people about inflation, but when money comes into the mother or sister’s account, it is directly visible in the house. In such a situation, the anger automatically reduces.”
Sudhir says that after the victory in the assembly elections, NCP’s Ajit Pawar has also called the Ladli Behan scheme a game changer.
Talking about the impact of this scheme, senior social worker Pratima Pardeshi says that it has definitely had an impact.
She says, “The voting percentage of women has increased in this election, so we can definitely say that the Ladli Behan scheme may be the reason behind this.”
Pardeshi says, “If only one installment of this scheme had been received, this would not have been said, but before the elections, three installments were deposited in the accounts of women, which resulted in increased participation of women in voting.”
She says, “It seems that this scheme has affected women from both rural and urban areas. Women from the middle class and poor sections of the city have also received money, because the Mahayuti government has not yet set any specific criteria for this scheme.”
“The effect of this scheme was that women in rural areas also forgot that they had not received the price for their soybean crop.”