The Congress has identified about a dozen districts in Maharashtra where its base is rapidly eroding for the past few years. They include Thane, Nashik, Jalgaon, Beed, Jalna, Parbhani, Satara, Buldhana, Akola, Aurangabad and Ahmednagar.
The Congress leaders and its senior officials want the leadership and the party ministers to focus on these districts.
A senior Congress leader who did not want to be named said: “In some of these districts, I saw people did not want to fight elections on the Congress symbol.”
Suggesting that the leadership should not disturb leaders in the districts where the Congress is strong, insiders want chief minister Prithviraj Chavan to concentrate on western Maharashtra and revive the party and PCC president Manikrao Thakre to focus on Vidarbha where the BJP-Shiv Sena combine has emerged as a major force.
While the BJP-Shiv Sena have won the Amravati, Chandrapur, Akola, Buldhana and Yavatmal-Washim Lok Sabha seats, the Congress retained Nagpur and succeeded in Ramtek Wardha and Gadchiroli-Chimur seats. The NCP won the Bhandara-Gondiya seat.
The Congress is comfortable in Vidarbha as compared with other regions in the state.
If the BJP and the NCP have made inroads in north Maharashtra, Marathawad has always been known as the “Opposition-influenced” region, barring Latur, Osmanabad and Nanded districts.
The party does not consider Mumbai (six Lok Sabha seats) as its stronghold despite wiping out the Shiv Sena-BJP combine in the last two Lok Sabha elections. This is because insiders feel that Mumbai voters are unpredictable.
The government is on the defensive on the unprecedented power cut in the state, barring inflation and corruption. This could damage the ruling coalition’s prospects in the coming local body elections.
The current mood in the Congress is to fight these polls without an alliance with the NCP.
“These are the elections where we can adjust our party workers. Their success and defeats decide the fate of the Assembly and Lok Sabha seats,” insiders feel.