NEW DELHI: For the ruling BJP, the general election of 2019 jump-starts now. This is where the BJP takes the knife to the prison yard fight, for in 2014, it won 161 of the 240 seats on view. As middle and north India goes to the polls over the next four phases, the BJP’s resolve gets emboldened further for it knows that to retain power, it has to convert these seats into victories.
In 2014, even as the BJP won 161 seats, Trinamool Congress won 30 and the Congress won nine while the rest were shared by the splinter parties.
Imagine the BJP’s total tally of 282, the final four phases contributed the steroid bulked 161 seats. However, in a straight fight in many constituencies, the Congress came second in 96 while the BSP came number 2 in 20, SP in 18, RJD in 17 and CPI(M) in 22. But, there is every possibility that 2019 will witness a change for while the BJP will try and carve a larger share of seats for itself, the Congress, RJD, BSP and SP too will try and make inroads into BJP territories.
Modi, in many ways a human metronome, has been assiduously assuming the role of a hegemon in Indian polity, his cult is the only one that matters, larger than life as he strides forward like a Colossus. Since 2014, barring the reverses in Bihar and Delhi till the recent losses in the three states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, he has taken the BJP to the absolute zenith of unparalleled power. Modi’s personal equity has not suffered despite Notebandi and Gabbar Singh Tax or widespread rural distress as his opponent Rahul Gandhi assails him publicly from pit stop to pit stop.
In many ways, the BJP has assumed the role of a dominant political force under his stewardship, one that is reminiscent of Mrs Gandhi’s Congress in the early 1970s.
Closer scrutiny of the 2014 election data will reveal that the BJP’s seats came from eight states in north-central India which accounted for 75 per cent of its parliamentary tally. With the Hindu vote consolidating behind Modi after years of minorityism and appeasement, the BJP and its allies won 104 out of 120 seats in the populous Hindi heartland states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Normally, the states are seen as fragmented, multi-party states unlike Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, or Rajasthan, which feature bipolar competition between the Congress and the BJP.
In both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, powerful regional chieftains always go toe-to-toe with the Big Two. Modi’s landslide broke that political calculus and rewrote a new power algo.
Further, the BJP ramped up its presence in India’s northeastern states – consisting of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura – where it has traditionally had a modest presence. In 2014, the BJP earned an average vote share of 28 per cent in these states, notching eight seats (out of 25 on offer). Compared to the previous election in 2009, the BJP doubled both its vote and seat shares.
Two decades ago, the Congress earned 40 per cent of the vote and held 13 seats in this region; in 2014, its share had dwindled to 30 per cent and eight seats (virtually identical to the BJP’s position). In the coming days, Modi’s Hindu ‘asmita’ of chauvinism factor will be a vote catcher, for this newly acquired machismo with a strong undertone of Hindu nationalism and poplulist development can be the differentiator. Under Modi’s power play a distinct systemic partisan tilt has been seen with the Hindu vote aggregating behind him breaking the caste faultlines that normally exist in Indian politics. So, while the BJP is expected to fall short of a simple majority on its own, it will have to engage with regional bosses to construct a new right wing coalition, one that will have to be more accommodating of their aspirations and ambitions. IANS