Last Thursday witnessed yet another blow to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Government at the national level as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost three of the four Lok Sabha by-elections and 10 out of 11 State Assembly elections in different states. And these defeats are not stray verdicts of the people. After winning the Uttar Pradesh State Assembly elections with handsome margin in 2017, the ruling side has been facing defeats after defeats at various levels. It lost Punjab, followed by a thin margin victory in Gujarat, the home state of Modi and the BJP President Amit Shah. The party failed to wrest power from the Congress as it failed seven seats short to reach the magic figure. Before that it had lost three prestigious Lok Sabha seats in UP and Bihar. Now it suffered a major setback as it lost three seats that it had won in 2014. Now, the strength of the BJP in Lok Sabha is reduced to 274, just one seat more than the absolute majority. The downward journey of the ruling party is more alarming as the next show of 2019 Lok Sabha elections is just a few months away.
In Maharashtra, the BJP could retain the Palghar reserved seat. However, it lost the Bhandara-Gondia seat to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). If these verdicts are any indication, the BJP has started losing its ground that would perhaps finally end up in a nose-dive. The BJP had a bad day at the office across the country with only Palghar in Maharashtra saving it the blushes. The signal sent by Palghar was that it was the index of opposition unity which defeats the BJP. Even Palghar, where Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis campaigned like a man possessed, the BJP’s margin of victory came down to 20,000 from 2,30,000.
People’s ‘no-confidence’
The results of Maharashtra by-elections, in the opinion of many political observers and pundits, is a stern ‘no-confidence’ showed by the people of rural India. If Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and his party-men fail to read the writing on the wall, the 2019 would be a fatal event for them, many believe.
Interestingly, the Shiv Sena, which has broken off its 20-year-old “alliance” with the BJP, is also in play to ally with the BJP’s opposition in Maharashtra. Sharad Pawar has checked the temperature and stopped his tacit alliance with the BJP, hopes to work out a similar “quiet understanding” with Sena Party Chief Uddhav Thackeray.
Anyway, since a lot has already been written about the verdict in Maharashtra, I wish to concentrate today on by-poll results in other constituencies, particularly in the UP.
The Kairana by-polls has sent out an unambiguous message after the Gorakhpur and Phulpur wins of the Samajwadi Party alliance — a united opposition will trounce the BJP in the UP, the country’s swing state with 80 parliamentary seats. The BJP had won the Kairana parliamentary seat by a margin of 2.4 lakh in 2014. Kairana was the epicenter of the infamous “Hindu exodus” theory floated by the BJP that, many believed, was aimed at tried and tested polarisation of voters. The BJP had pulled out all the stops, desperate to ensure that the opposition did not have the impetus to unite — the win in Kairana will provide that. Modi used the fig leaf of an expressway launch to campaign next door to Kairana, taking out a road-show and defying convention that prime ministers never campaign for by-polls.
Despite all these ethical and unethical tactics, nothing worked for the BJP. The RLD will now be a junior partner in the planned mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) between Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party. BJP leaders had ridiculed the regional heavyweights as “an alliance of snake and mongoose”. But, the UP voters clearly like the story that “Bua (Mayawati) and Bhatija (Akhilesh)” are telling. The Congress will now have no choice but to hitch its wagon to the mahagathbandhan as a junior partner, with neither Mayawati nor Akhilesh exactly desperate to have the grand old party on board.
Another possible outcome of this situation is that the Congress and BSP will now ally for certain for the Madhya Pradesh polls. The BJP is not expecting great results from the elections later this year in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where it is in power. Sources say that the Congress has already roped in a small regional party and the deal with Mayawati is done and dusted. The by-poll results across 10 states underline that regional parties and opposition math pose a huge challenge to the BJP.
On the other hand, the BJP is hoping to capitalise on Modi-versus-the-rest as one man takes on the disparate group of parties — what the BJP calls a “corrupt khichri” — but as the incumbent, Modi can’t really seem to convince the voters, as recent results reveal. A key takeaway from UP is that the incessant demonisation of Muslims — which started with the 2013 riots in Muzzaffarnagar in western UP — is clearly producing diminishing returns. The lower caste consolidation in UP is also a reaction to the unapologetic “Thakur raj” run by Yogi Adityanath and the scary “freedom of encounters” apparently given to the UP Police.
Kairana was a huge psychological mood-changer for both the opposition and the BJP. The opposition will now look to script unity across the country. The fence-sitters on the opposition may now want to consolidate against the threat from the BJP, which under Amit Shah has treated allies roughly, eaten into their space and given no quarter. Amit Shah, with his gargantuan electoral appetite and arrogance in dealing with NDA allies, seems to have lost his strategic objective of keeping the opposition divided as he wants to win everywhere.
BJP eats a humble pie
The BJP will now have to eat a humble pie if it wants to keep its remaining flock together. But it seems in no mood to, as Nitish Kumar — the Bihar chief minister who switched loyalties — is finding out the hard way after being marginalised and publicly snubbed by the BJP.
While the BJP is now the real pole of politics, yet it finds itself floundering. With the party still claiming the biggest war-chest, the agencies and the charisma of Modi, don’t underestimate Amit Shah just yet. But the BJP now has a real fight on its hands for 2019. It will not be a walkover.
Bharatkumar Raut is a political analyst and former Member of Parliament (RS).
