Editorial: Draw in semi-finals

Voters have once again surprised the pundits. Against the general expectation that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai two weeks ago would have influenced voting in Rajasthan and Delhi, engendering a swing in favour of the BJP, it is the Congress which has triumphed in both states. In Delhi, Sheila Dikshit has won an unprecedented third term, while in Rajasthan Vasundhara Raje Scindia is one of two chief ministers to have been unseated, the other being Mizoram’s Zoramthanga. Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh and Raman Singh in Chattisgarh have also retained power quite comfortably, for the BJP.

If there is any clearly discernible pattern to the results, it is one which suggests that anti-incumbency at the state level is not as strong a factor as it has been at the Centre. If one chief minister has won a third term, and two their second terms, it is also useful to remember that there has been no shortage of two-term chief ministers in the past couple of decades: Narendra Modi in Gujarat, Digvijay Singh in MP, Lalu Prasad in Bihar (who was succeeded by his wife for another term), Naveen Patnaik in Orissa, Tarun Gogoi in Assam, Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, and of course Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in West Bengal (who succeeded the 5-term Jyoti Basu). Zoramthanga in Mizoram was himself a two-term chief minister. So Ms Scindia in Rajasthan could consider herself unlucky in losing after just one term; perhaps the explanation is that she alienated key caste groups in the agitation over reservations, or it could be that the widespread allegations of corruption had their effect. It is interesting, though, that chief ministers in other states (UP, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab, Haryana) routinely get unseated at the end of their terms.

If this was the “semi-final” round, as a precursor to the Lok Sabha “finals” due in five months, the pointers to what lies ahead are not at all clear. While the Congress has beaten expectations, it is the BJP that has won in more constituencies. To be sure, the issues in state elections are different from national elections, and the personalities in play are also different, so the results of assembly polling cannot automatically be assumed to be a prediction of the Lok Sabha vote in these states. Still, it is generally the case that voters vote in the same way in elections that are held in quick succession.

That might be considered good news for the Congress since, other than Mizoram, the other four states are ones in which the BJP has a strong presence. The problem they have in the heartland of course is that neither the Congress nor the BJP counts for very much in the two populous states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (which between them account for 120 Lok Sabha seats). Amidst the general rise of the smaller parties, the unknown quantity now is UP’s Mayawati. Her effort to broaden her appeal to new states, communities and castes has met with modest success in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, where she has picked up a few seats. In that sense, she will now be a factor in parliamentary politics, especially since the cobbling together of coalitions will once again lie at the heart of government formation at the Centre.