Comfortably placed

BJP's prospects are growing stronger

If the results of the latest Assembly elections can be considered the “semi-final” for 2024, it is possible to conclude that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a shoo-in for 2024. The ruling party has delivered a hat-trick in the Hindi heartland with the Congress winning a consolation prize in Telangana. In the big picture, the results so far (counting for Mizoram will take place on Monday) confirm the great political divide at the Vindhyas in terms of the ruling party’s popularity, especially after the Congress won in Karnataka in May. The results also suggest that grand plans for Opposition unity ahead of 2024 are meaningless, since the leading national party in the INDIA alliance, the Congress, has conspicuously failed to hold on to its gains. It has, in fact, done much worse everywhere except Telangana, where it rode an anti-incumbency wave. The BJP’s performance has comprehensively upturned the pre-poll and exit poll punditry of a close fight in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh with the Congress retaining Chhattisgarh. Instead it has won comfortable majorities in all these states.
 

Unlike 2018, when anti-incumbency played a critical role in the unexpected Congress victories in the three Hindi belt states, the BJP has managed to score significant gains in seats and vote share in Madhya Pradesh. It returned to power in this state in 2020 not through the ballot box but after former Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia orchestrated a revolt that sent 22 Congress MLAs to the BJP camp. For all that, incumbent Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan pulled off a remarkable defence, though he does not have a significantly better track record in economic management than the incumbent chief ministers of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Infighting between Ashok Gehlot and chief ministerial contender Sachin Pilot helped the Congress score an own goal in Rajasthan. In Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the Congress may rue the reliance on the old guard in preference to ambitious younger politicians. But the real shock for the Grand Old Party came in Chhattisgarh, where the BJP has registered its best ever performance in terms of seats and vote share to rout its national rival.
 

It is also possible to conclude that welfarism may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to win elections. In Telangana, for instance, K Chandrasekhar Rao’s party Bharat Rashtra Samithi could not hold on to power despite his signature Rythu Bandhu scheme for farmers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sparked a national debate after he mocked Mr Gehlot’s “revdi” (freebie) culture following serial announcements of free amenities for poor people in the state. But in Madhya Pradesh, Mr Chouhan was no slouch in rolling out the free or subsidised red carpet for the poor in much the same way. One difference, perhaps, is that the BJP’s hard Hindutva may have had greater resonance in the northern states to the Opposition’s emollient attempts at soft Hindutva. In a sense, the latest results in the Hindi belt states show that the BJP has consolidated its position after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when it comprehensively won in all three Congress-ruled states. These elections have been a test for Mr Modi, who remained the face of the campaigns in all three states. For the umpteenth time in the past nine years, the Congress has failed to present itself as a convincing alternative to this BJP formula.