Mumbai: In an unprecedented sweep across Maharashtra, the BJP and Shiv Sena won 41 out of 48 seats in the state leaving a stunned Congress with just two seats while the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) managed to get four.

The biggest surprise and perhaps the irony of the Congress, being denigrated for turning a blind eye to corruption, is that former chief minister Ashok Chavan, whose nomination was disapproved because of his involvement in the Adarsh housing scam, was the only leader to win. He beat BJP’s D B Patil from the Nanded constituency.

This is the worst ever performance for the Congress and NCP which gathered 25 seats in 2009 as compared to Sena-BJP which won 19 seats.

Big names from the Congress party with big connections to the Gandhi family saw their names decimated by the Modi Wave now being described as the Modi Tsunami. Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde from Solapur, close to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, lost to BJP’s Sharad Bansode whilst NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s right hand man Praful Patel faced defeat at the hands of another BJP candidate Nanabhau Patole.

But the biggest shocker came for Mumbai’s six sitting MPs — five Congress and one NCP — who literally got the rug pulled from under their feet by some absolute newcomers like BJP’s Poonam Mahajan who defeated Priya Dutt and Arvind Sawant who beat Congressman Murli Deora.

Gopal Shetty of BJP won the Mumbai North seat with a whopping margin of 380,000 defeating nearest rival and sitting MP Sanjay Nirupam even as Shiv Sena’s Gajanan Kirtikar wrested the Mumbai North West seat from Congress’s Gurudas Kamat.

What is interesting is that Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, who decided not to field his candidates wherever BJP was contesting, did not manage a single seat across the state. There is now a question whether he truly has any charismatic appeal with the Marathi sons of the soil.

The losses for the Congress-NCP became a butt of fun on social media with many on Facebook and Twitter advising that former Sena members — NCP’s Chhagan Bhujbal contesting from Nashik and Congressman Narayan Rane’s son Nilesh Rane from Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg — must rejoin the Sena. Both candidates were defeated by Sena candidates Hemant Godse and Vinayak Raut.

In the farmers’ suicide prone region of Vidarbha, the saffron parties clean bowled most of the well-entrenched sitting MPs like Vilas Muttemwar who lost to former BJP president Nitin Gadkari and this was repeated in Wardha, too.

In Marathwada’s Beed constituency, the intense campaigning by NCP chief Sharad Pawar and others could not ensure a win for Suresh Dhas as BJP’s Gopinath Munde triumphed here.

Saffron ally, Swabhimani Paksha’s farmer-leader Raju Shetty won from Hatkanangle by a margin of 177,810 votes from the Congress candidate.

According to Munde, Pawar made a “big mistake” by fielding ministers of his party for the Lok Sabha polls as people got a chance to vent their anger against them and the party over corruption and non-development. “Bhujbal and Sunil Tatkare (from Raigad) were not keen on contesting the polls but Pawar fielded them.”

Across the state, the BJP-Sena was on a great high, the verdict clearly leaving the Congress and NCP in tatters and which will certainly compel them into a deep introspection as to whether this ‘tsunami’ will continue in the assembly elections a few months ahead.