Jharkhand marks the latest in the string of setbacks for the BJP in state Assembly polls this year after its grand victory in the General Election in May.
A focus on local issues by the Opposition, consolidation of the tribal community against the BJP government’s rule and an alliance between Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) turned out to be the trump cards for the Opposition in the state where the BJP had won 11 of the 14 Lok Sabha seats just seven months ago.
This makes the BJP’s defeat a huge loss for the party in Jharkhand where it had led in 57 assembly seats with more than 50 per cent of the vote share in the General Election.
As a result, the victory of the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance, coming two months after the BJP’s poor show in Haryana and loss of power in Maharashtra, has put fresh wind in the Opposition sails. There are clear lessons from the trend emerging out of the three state polls for the BJP and the Opposition parties which cannot be ignored.
After a dismal performance in the Lok Sabha election, the Opposition seems to have recovered some ground to stand against the might of BJP’s propaganda and poll machinery.
This recovery is a result of two major factors: one, the Opposition’s strong focus on local and bread-and-butter issues, and two, the criticality of its alliances.
The third and equally important factor is Modi’s limitations in getting votes for the BJP in state elections, which was well-established in the three Hindi heartland state polls—Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh—in December 2018.
The fourth factor is the irrelevance of national narrative in state elections: triple talaq, Article 370, construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya and clearing India of infiltrators.
In Maharashtra and Haryana, the BJP tried its best to beat the war drums of its core ideology, but local issues and caste politics trumped the national narrative. In Jharkhand where tribals voted overwhelmingly against the BJP, its focus on national issues also failed to yield a favourable result.
Even the enactment of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) did not help. This shows that voters are making careful electoral choices and are also making a distinction between national and state elections.
This also validates that the issues and personalities that sway people in a general election lose their importance and impact in state assembly polls. This wasn’t the case between mid-2014 and mid-2017 when the BJP went on winning election after election in several states.
This gave the impression that the BJP was an unstoppable force. Some political analysts are of the view that most of those BJP victories were mainly a result of anti-incumbency against the Congress.
But all assembly polls in 2018 and 2019 were well-fought contests with the Opposition stealing the thunder from the BJP. Except in Karnataka, the BJP fared badly in nine state elections in a row. It did not get a mandate to form the government in Karnataka either.
The process of Opposition’s revival had begun with Gujarat assembly election in December 2017 when the Congress brought down the BJP’s strength from 115 in 2012 to 99 seats in the prime minister’s home state. The BJP could have even lost the election, but for some close results which went in its favour.
Had there been an alliance between the Congress and the NCP in Gujarat, the result could have even gone in the alliance’s favour. At that time people had written off the Congress. But Gujarat proved that neither Congress, nor the Opposition was dead.
In Karnataka, though the BJP emerged the single largest party, its attempt to grab power through horse trading was scuttled by the Supreme Court. The JD(S)-led alliance that came to power with Congress offering unconditional support, would have stayed in office much longer had there not been constant friction and bickering between the two partners over power sharing.
It is a fact that 17 rebel MLAs brought down the Congress-JD(S) alliance a year after it came to power and the BJP played a pivotal role in hastening its end in the aftermath of the General Election result: in Karnataka BJP won 25 of the 28 seats, while the Congress and the JD(S) won one each.
Who would have thought that only six months into its second term, with 303 Lok Sabha seats in its account, the BJP would lose Jharkhand, fail in Haryana to win majority and lose power in Maharashtra?
Probably, the 2019 victory gave the BJP an exaggerated sense that its sterling performance in the national election was largely a Hindutva mandate that calls for an aggressive and rapid implementation of its majoritarian agenda.
Probably, the ruling party also misread silent anger against the government as support for its divisive policies, when economic slowdown is impacting people’s lives.
After all, neither the prime minister, nor the home minister expected such ferocious pushback against the CAA and NRC, which are also being seen as a smokescreen to divert people’s attention from a plummeting economy.
While the BJP’s aggressive nationalistic and majoritarian campaign worked for the party in the national election, it did not work in state elections in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh which were held simultaneously with the General Election.
It was the same story in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Modi is a highly popular leader, but his personal popularity does not deliver votes in state Assembly elections. This has been proved time and again in the last two years.
As a result, the BJP now rules states accounting for less than 40 per cent of India’s landmass, as compared to 70 per cent two years ago. This has dashed the BJP’s hopes of garnering a majority in the Rajya Sabha by the end of 2020.
After a debacle in the General Election in the first half of 2019, the Opposition has emerged stronger in state elections in the second half. That is why, with non-BJP states on the offensive on CAA and NRC, the government has been forced to backtrack on the latter, at least for now.
The message from state polls is pretty clear: shun divisive politics and policies; fix the economy and bring in a positive change in people’s lives. Therefore, the BJP should not under-read the message and the Opposition should not overreact.
Despite electoral reversals in state polls, at the national level, the BJP will continue to pose a big challenge to the Opposition, as in its ideological makeup India is more saffron now than at any other point in the last 70 years.
The author is an independent senior journalist.
