With the BJP announcing its election in-charges for Bihar, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the stage is set for the assembly polls in the above states – starting with Bihar in November, followed by polls in Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry next year. While there’s no sign yet of implementing the ‘one-nation, one election’ plan of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, several more rounds of assembly polls would take place in each of the coming years until 2029 when the next parliament polls are scheduled. Assembly elections in the main battleground state of Uttar Pradesh would take place in 2027, alongside Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Manipur and Goa. These would form the initial build-up for the next parliamentary polls.
The drag in the plan to hold elections nationwide in one go, so as to save precious funds for the exchequer means that such a decision is not easy to implement, considering the huge preparations involved in the exercise. But, where there’s a will, there’s a way. The will, however, is lacking. The panel on unified polls, formed by the central government in September 2023 and headed by former president Ram Nath Kovind, submitted its report in March 2024. This was not followed through to its logical conclusion. In a way, however, periodic election exercises across states at different times have their advantages. For one, the results are a barometer to gauge public mood vis-à-vis national and regional politics. This is all the more important now, as there are perceptions that the stocks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi — the central figure that boosts the election prospects of the BJP–are falling. Two recent opinion polls on the PM’s popularity showed Modi has not been able to sustain his approval levels. The last parliament polls had seen a substantial fall in the NDA seats in the Lok Sabha. With the BJP-led alliance failing to get a majority, Modi had to draw in the parties of his past enemies – Bihar’s Nitish Kumar and AP’s Chandrababu Naidu — to cobble a majority for his national alliance to form the next government. It was a touch-and-go situation, but the PM extricated himself from the critical situation by ensuring the support of the JDU and Telugu Desam and by giving them prime portfolios.
The coming assembly elections would show how the BJP, the Congress, and their allies would perform in state polls. By swiftly announcing poll in-charges for states like TN that would have elections next year, the BJP makes it clear that it cannot afford to be complacent anymore. However, its failure to fill the top slots in the party, including that of the national chief, who’s on extension, shows all’s not well within the saffron edifice. On the other hand, a down-and-out Congress party is keen on giving a good fight to the BJP as is evident from Rahul Gandhi’s campaign against the ECI’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar and elsewhere. The Congress is allying with regional heavyweights in both UP and Bihar.
