How the voter’s mind works is always hard to fathom. Despite the high-octane propaganda by the Congress Party over the Vyapam scam, the BJP has retained the lone Assembly seat that witnessed re-election in the recent round of bypolls across the country. Clearly, the factors that work at the constituency level often override the concerns of State and national politicians. The victory of Chander Singh Sisodia in the Garoth Assembly constituency, albeit by a somewhat reduced margin than that of the party candidate in the 2013 election, is significant. Both the ruling party in Bhopal and the State Congress leadership need to draw a few lessons. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has reason to feel reassured that in spite of the almost daily revelations about the Vyapam scam, the voters in the State are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. This, despite the fact that an overly raucous Digvijay Singh has desperately tried to embroil him in the controversy. Besides, the Congress Party ought to move away from the single issue agenda of hammering ad nauseam this unfortunate recruitment scandal in a bid to regain some relevance. Its sole aim so far seems to be to tar the ruling BJP with the same brush of corruption with which it stands fully tarred. Taking up the bread and butter issues of the people might yield more gains for the once mighty Congress than its constant obsession with discovering scams under every stone on which it can lay its hands on, in Madhya Pradesh.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the latest round of by-elections, the outcome has been more or less on predictable lines. The notable thing in the R.K. Nagar bypoll, for instance, was not that the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jaylalithaa won, but the hugeness of her victory margin. Netting 88 percent of the polled votes and winning with a margin of over 1.5 lakh votes is a record in itself. All her rivals, including the nearest who bagged less than ten thousand votes, lost their deposits. Her charisma remains undiminished despite her conviction and subsequent acquittal in the disproportionate assets case. It also mattered little to the fawning voters that uncertainty still dogged her continuance as Chief Minister, following the challenge to her acquittal in the Supreme Court. Jayalalithaa had a point when she read, in her huge win, a pointer to the shape of things to come in the Assembly poll in the State due next year. With the DMK down in the dumps, largely because of the loot and plunder by its Ministers in the UPA Government as also due to the ugly war of succession in the Karunanidhi family, the AIADMK future can be marred only by an adverse ruling in the DA case by the apex court. Meanwhile in neighbouring Kerala, the by-election result has thrown up a different message. Here, as elsewhere, the ruling party managed to retain the Aruvikkara constituency, albeit with a reduced margin even though it had fielded the son of the party leader who had held the seat uninterrupted since 1991. His death ought to have resulted in a sympathy vote for his son, but the winning margin declined despite a seven percent growth in the electorate. Remarkably, both the Congress and the main opposition, the CPI(M), saw a sharp drop in their vote shares. And, more remarkably, the BJP saw a five-fold jump in its vote-share. Clearly, the BJP’s tallest leader in Kerala, O. Rajagopal, pulled in voters from the two main parties, polling over 34,000 votes to the winner’s 56,000.
Indeed, the BJP has reason to be happy that amidst the high decibel noise over the Lalitgate, the party seemed to have dented the hitherto impregnable CPI(M) fortress in Tripura. Though the ruling CPI(M) easily retained both the seats, Pratapgarh and Surma, it was the relegation of the Congress to the third place that was the real story of the bypolls in Tripura. In Pratapgarh, the BJP managed 20 percent of the votes polled as against the Congress’s ten percent; in Surma the BJP came second with 18 percent of the votes polled while the Congress got only six percent of the popular vote. Whether the fact that the BJP is in power at the Centre was a factor in Kerala and Tripura or there was a genuine search for a third alternative distinct from the old and tired Congress and CPI(M) is hard to tell, but the outcome in these two states has given all the parties a lot to chew over. Old and settled voter preferences and prejudices might be at last weakening in those areas where the BJP hitherto had a negligible presence. Overall, the bypolls have affirmed the peoples’ faith in the status quo.
