The BJP has serious reasons to worry. It lost Jharkhand on Monday just as it failed to retain Maharashtra and could not craft a majority in Haryana – the three states that went to assembly polls after the mid-year Lok Sabha polls. There is no guarantee, too, it can have an easy go in the coming Delhi assembly polls. What could be to its comfort — and no comfort this — is that the Congress party or the principal Opposition at the national level too fared poorly in all these assembly polls.
The BJP in Jharkhand was a divided house, evident from the fact that a senior leader rebelled against chief minister Raghubar Das and stood against him in the Jharkhand East constituency. Das won, though; but he and the party lost power. His governance had left much to be desired, yet he held on for the full term, which is a record in the state’s troubled political climate ever since its formation in 2000. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) is set to lead the next government in alliance with the Congress, which retained its old strength of 14 in the assembly, and the RJD of Bihar strongman Lalu Prasad Yadav.
The scenario is similar to Maharashtra, where too regional entity the Shiv Sena formed the ministry with the NCP and the Congress as junior partners. In Haryana, the Congress continues to sit in the Opposition, while a new pro-Jat party has the capacity to flex its muscles and hand-hold BJP chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar. Significantly, both the national parties – the BJP and the Congress – were given a jolt by the electorate in all the three states. BJP’s claim that it still emerged the largest segment in two of these two assemblies should be small comfort.
The rise of regional parties is clearly at the expense of the national parties. The BJP won the LS polls in the backdrop of Pulwama and Balakot. There, otherwise, was no wind in its favour. The same cannot apply to state assembly polls where performance of local governments matter most. The BJP and its governments need to do better if they aim to remain in power. The Congress, as of now, might be a lost cause though its victories in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh before the LS polls hint it cannot be wished away. A safe guess is the BJP defeat might also have to do with the economic downturn affecting the people at large.