In the 38 Maharashtra seats where Muslims make up more than 20% of the population, the BJP raised its tally to 14 this time, up from 11 in 2019. The Congress showed the biggest slide, going down from 11 seats five years ago to only five this time.

The combined Mahayuti’s tally, of 22, was also ahead of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA)’s 13 in these 38 seats. While Mahayuti members Shiv Sena and NCP won six and two seats each, on the MVA side, the Sena (UBT) got six seats and the NCP (SP) two.

Of the three remaining seats, the Samajwadi Party won Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar and Bhiwandi East, while the AIMIM got Malegaon Central.

While the Congress won Mumbadevi, Akola West, Dharavi, Malad West, and Latur City, the BJP took Bhiwandi West, Aurangabad West, Andheri West, Akot, Vandre West, Solapur Central, Nagpur Central, Dhule, Sion Koliwada, Karanja, Pune Cantonment, Raver, Washim, and Malkapur.

Apart from the Congress, the results are a disappointment for the AIMIM, as admitted by a party leader speaking off the record. The party that had hoped to better its performance in Maharashtra by contesting fewer seats and focusing its energy and resources on them – it put up candidates in 16, compared to 44 five years ago – failed to even match its 2019 tally of two seats.

Among those who lost was its prominent state chief Imtiaz Jaleel, who finished 2,000-odd votes behind the BJP in Aurangabad East.

In the only seat the AIMIM won, the Muslim-majority Malegaon Central, its candidate Mufti Ismail, the sitting MLA, scraped through by just 162 votes – the narrowest margin in the state.

The new Maharashtra Assembly will have 10 Muslim MLAs, the same as in 2019. This is 0.03% of the total; the community makes up around 11.56% of the state’s population.

The number of Muslim MLAs in Maharashtra has never gone beyond 13, reaching this in 1972, 1980 and 1999. The lowest tally was in 1995, at 8.

The Muslim MLAs this time are the Congress’s Amin Patel, Aslam Shaikh and Sajid Pathan; the NCP’s Sana Malik and Hasan Mushrif; the Sena (UBT)’s Haroon Khan; the Shinde Sena’s Abdul Sattar; the AIMIM’s Mufti Ismail; and the SP’s Abu Azmi and Rais Shaikh Haroon Khan.

Among the big Muslim names who lost was Nawab Malik and Zeeshan Siddique of the NCP, and Arif Naseem Khan of the Congress.

For the AIMIM’s Jaleel, the Assembly loss comes close on the heels of his defeat from Aurangabad in this year’s Lok Sabha polls, a seat he had won in 2019.

The Malegaon Central seat that the AIMIM retained saw its victory margin drop from more than 38,000 votes in 2019 to 162. What will worry the party is that the scare to its candidate Mufti Ismail – who survived two health setbacks during the campaign – was given by a small outfit called the Indian Secular Largest Assembly of Maharashtra (with acronym ISLAM).

In the Dhule City seat that the AIMIM had won besides Malegaon Central in 2019, it finished over 45,000 votes behind the BJP this time.

Aside from these seats, the AIMIM repeated its performance from 2019 in Aurangabad Central, Aurangabad East, Byculla, and Solapur City Central, ending second again.

The AIMIM’s 2019 victories in Maharashtra had been its first outside its area of influence in Hyderabad in Telangana. This had prompted the party to try its luck in Bihar the next year. After it won five seats in Bihar, it contested in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and even Tamil Nadu, but failed to open its account anywhere.

Sources said the AIMIM picked the 16 seats it chose to contest this time in Maharashtra in regions where it had strong organisation and support. Even in 2014, the party had contested more constituencies, 24, in Maharashtra.

Apart from a focused campaign, the AIMIM also hoped to consolidate Dalit and Muslim votes behind it, and hence fielded candidates in four SC-reserved seats – Miraj in Sangli, Murtijapur in Akola, Kurla in Mumbai and Nagpur North in Nagpur. None could garner any significant votes.

Before the polls, the AIMIM had said it had reached out to the INDIA bloc for an alliance. Jaleel had told The Indian Express that he had not got any response.

The AIMIM’s slide in Maharashtra follows poor performance in successive elections recently, including the Lok Sabha polls, where only its chief Owaisi won from Hyderabad.

BJP 14: Bhiwandi West, Aurangabad West, Andheri West, Akot, Vandre West, Solapur Central, Nagour Central, Dhule, Sion Koliwada, Karanja, Pune Cantonment, Raver, Washim, Malkapur,

Congress 5: Malad West, Latur City, Mumbadevi, Akola West, Dharavi

Shinde Shiv Sena 6: Aurangabad Central, Kurla, Chandivali, Nanded North, Nanded South, Beed

Shiv Sena (UBT) 6: Byculla, Versova, Bandra East, Parbhani. Kalina, Balapur

Ajit Pawar NCP 2: Amravati, Anushakti Nagar

Samajwadi Party 2: Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar, Bhiwandi East

NCP (SP) 2: Mumbra Kalwa, Jalna

AIMIM 1: Malegaon Central