Assembly polls 2018: Congress gained a leader, BJP lost a mascot, and more

For BJP, the reigning deities have lost magic and bhakts are hoping for miracles; for the Opposition, the recent state elections have shown the need for Congress and other parties to stick together

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has apparently not taken stock of its failure in the recently concluded five-state Assembly elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the only person who spoke at the meeting of the BJP’s parliamentary party convened after the electoral debacle. At the party headquarters, the sole speaker was party president Amit Shah. There was no formal dialogue with the members of Parliament or the party office bearers.

Amit Shah is reported to have told party functionaries “(the) BJP did not lose in these elections and the Congress did not win”. This cryptic one-liner is hardly an adequate analysis of his party’s electoral losses. Nor is it anywhere near the truth. The Congress gained more than he presumes and the BJP lost more than he admits. Even the social media slogan “Pappu pass Gappu fail (Pappu, — Rahul Gandhi, that is — has passed, and the tall-talker has failed)” does not entirely capture the outcome of the results.

The Congress has gained an undisputed leader. Rahul Gandhi has graduated from being doubted by his own party-men to a national leader. Charges from within the party that he was not an effective leader or was immature have been effectively answered. Recall how even Sheila Dixit and Amarinder Singh had railed against his leadership at one time.

The party’s losing streak also seems to be over. If one leaves out Punjab, where the Akali Dal was a more significant opponent, this is the first victory of the Congress in a direct contest with the BJP in any state since 2014.

Rahul Gandhi’s choice of chief ministers in the newly won states has also shown him to be capable of strategic thinking. While no one can predict the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections in these states, it is clear that he has chosen their chief ministers with the coming general elections in mind.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, senior leader L K Advani and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj during BJP Parliamentary Party meeting at Parliament House. (Photo: PTI)

There have been other gains as well.

The Congress victories have also opened up the possibility of a grand alliance of the Opposition. A psychological barrier has been crossed by the Congress as well as the regional Opposition parties. Each has realised the usefulness of the other for its own success. The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which had not attended the meeting of the Opposition parties on December 10, changed their tune a day later when results were declared. They offered unconditional support to help the Congress form governments in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where it fell short of majority by a small margin.

The BSP and SP have also realised that an effective Opposition to the BJP would have to include the Congress in states where there was a direct contest between the BJP and the Congress. The Congress too has realised that although it won a larger number of seats in MP and Rajasthan, its vote share was not much larger than that of the BJP; and that if it had gone for an alliance with the SP and the BSP the relative vote share of the two larger parties would have been decisive. For a decisive victory over the BJP, therefore, the Congress cannot do without an alliance with the anti-BJP parties. In Uttar Pradesh too, the SP and BSP will have to show greater accommodation of the Congress. They had begun to boast that the party had no stake in the state except for the two constituencies of Rae Bareli and Amethi.

Even outside the Hindi belt, the Congress has gained clout. Not least with leaders like N Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party and Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress, who have been known to nurse ambitions of leading the Opposition alliances for the general elections. They will now be compelled to recognise the Congress as an important factor in Opposition unity. This will also impact the alliance formation in states where regional parties are bargaining hard over alliance formation (Jharkhand) or seat sharing (Tamil Nadu).

Now consider the BJP’s losses.

First and foremost, the party seems to have lost its ability to critically analyse its failure. Nobody has the courage to tell the prime minister that the social media echo-chamber he inhabits is not an approximation of the real world.

The BJP has also lost its election mascot — Modi’s silver tongue could turn every election in its favour. Unless he somehow regains his lost magic before the general elections the BJP will become “Ram bharose” or dependent on Lord Ram — centering its agitation around a Ram temple in Ayodhya. That, however, may not be enough. A former BJP MP commented wryly, “Now to win we will also have to construct a statue of Narendra Modi, which would be the tallest in the world.”

The Modi-Shah duo must also worry that if even popular chief ministers like Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh were not able to win elections despite their record of governance, then the results cannot be better in the other BJP-ruled states. Chief Ministers like Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana, Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra, Raghubar Das in Jharkhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat in Uttarakhand and Jairam Thakur in Himachal have no individual mass bases. They will be far less able to tackle anti-incumbency against the Modi government than Chouhan or Raman Singh could.

The secret glee in the ranks of the BJP at the party’s defeat is surprising. Much of this is directed against the Modi-Shah duo. The two have de-institutionalised the party. The party structure has no muscle. The sole muscleman in the party is Amit Shah and he works on the orders of “sahib” – Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The rest of the party is only expected to follow their ‘nirdesh’ or direction.

As long as the Modi-Shah duo was winning elections, party-men worshipped them – not for nothing was the term “Bhakts” or worshippers, coined for their uncritical supporters. The reigning deities have now lost their magic and the bhakts are hoping for miracles. There is nobody else to turn to in a party that has been systematically hollowed out.