The results of 10 assembly byelections spread across eight states have been a thumbs up for the BJP which won in five of them, a limited face-saving revival for the Congress which retained both the seats in Karnataka defying predictions of a vote against incumbency and a rout for the Aam Aadmi Party in the lone byelection in Delhi’s Rajouri Garden. After the defeat in Punjab where it had created much hype and the ignominious showing in Goa where it failed to open its account, the battering AAP has received in Delhi on the eve of the municipal corporation elections there has shaken the edifice of the party. While it is premature to write off AAP, the signs are that the voter in Delhi has seen through its pretensions and that its national ambitions are doomed to fail. The Congress in Delhi, by contrast, has covered some ground.
However, there is a twist in the tale in Karnataka where the Siddharamaiah-led Congress government which the BJP has been confidently hoping to oust in the Assembly elections is still ruling strong despite a record of governance that is lacklustre. Dissidence against Siddharamaiah which has been rampant will predictably become muted as a result of the two byelection victories. One possible reason for BJP’s failure is that its chief ministerial choice B.S. Yeddyurappa is tainted by corruption charges. To add to his woes, during the byelection campaign too he was exposed in the media distributing cash to voters. With no other leader worth his salt in Karnataka, the BJP is saddled with Yeddyurappa. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has won one byelection and lost the other in Ater by a razor-thin margin. In Rajasthan’s Dholpur, the victory was more comprehensive with Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje re-asserting her role and the party united behind her. In Himachal Pradesh, where Assembly polls are due later this year, BJP won the Bhoranj seat from Congress, in a setback for Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh who is facing serious corruption charges.
While in West Bengal both byelections were won hands down by Trinamool Congress, the significant development was that BJP emerged second in both, leaving the Left and the Congress way behind. This is a pointer to the shape of things to come. In Assam too, the rejuvenated BJP won comfortably while in Jharkhand it was the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, an ally of the BJP that was running ahead, pipping the BJP to the winning post. All in all, the byelection results are a reaffirmation of the BJP’s ascendancy with Karnataka being the lone dampener for it. But there is no denying that byelection results are not a definitive index of the public mood—they are at best pointers.
