As the results of Assembly elections and bypolls brought a mixed bag for the INDIA bloc on Saturday, with the defeat in Maharashtra coming as a major setback, leaders of its constituents once again highlighted that smaller parties did not get enough seats to contest, even as they called the Jharkhand victory a "moral defeat" for the attempts at communal polarisation. The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance, which has the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) as its constituents, swept the Maharashtra polls, months after the Lok Sabha election, in which the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won a large chunk of seats. Communist Party of India (Marxist) Politburo member Ashok Dhawale flagged the delay in finalising seat-sharing arrangements, the race among key opposition parties to get the maximum number of seats to contest and not giving enough space to smaller parties among the reasons for the INDIA bloc's below-par performance in Maharashtra, even as he accused .