Assembly Elections 2024: BJP names election in-charge for Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday appointed senior party leaders as in-charge for upcoming assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jharkhand. The saffron party, which suffered a massive setback in the Lok Sabha elections in some states, appointed Union Minister Bhupender Yadav as state election in-charge for Maharashtra. 

Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will be overseeing the party's election campaign in Haryana, while Agriculture Minister Shivraj Sigh Chouhan has been appointed as election in-charge for Jharkhand. 

For Jammu and Kashmir, where the Supreme Court has directed elections before September, the BJP has deployed Union Minister G Kishan Reddy. 

The party has also appointed co-incharge for these states. Ashwini Vaishnaw has been appointed for Maharashtra, Biplab Kumar Deb for Haryana, and Himanta Biswa Sarma for Jharkhand.    

Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Haryana will go to polls later this year.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP lost significant ground in Maharashtra and Haryana. The Congress emerged as the largest party in Maharashtra by winning 13 of 17 seats, while the BJP could win just 9 of 28 it contested. The MVA bagged 30 of 48 seats in the state, while the NDA could bag only 17. 

While the BJP's seat loss was significant, the party's Maharashtra chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule said the vote difference between the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and the NDA was just 0.3%. In the assembly elections, he said, people would vote for the BJP and its allies since they know giving power to the MVA would stall welfare projects.

In Haryana too, the BJP could only win 5 of 10 Lok Sabha seats. In 2019, the party had won all 10 seats. The Congress is confident of winning back the state from BJP. Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda Sunday said: "This is just a beginning, the real fight lies ahead. We should not stop, nor bow down, we should just keep moving forward till the goal is achieved." He asked party workers to "expose the BJP government's failures" in the last 10 years.