What was touted as the semi-finals before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls has turned out to be a bitter experience for the BJP. It virtually lost power in three states and is faced with a rejuvenated Congress party at the national level. Both Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh failed to give the BJP the easy passage to power this time, and Chhattisgarh famously dumped the saffron party. The BJP gained little from the polls in Mizoram and Telangana, with negligible seats in its kitty.
Overall, the anti-incumbency factor was at work in the three states the BJP ruled, as also in Mizoram. Nothing encouraged the voters to wholeheartedly give the BJP a fresh chance in power; not even the spirited last-round campaigns by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The writing was on the wall. Rajasthan’s Vasundhara Raje Scindia was predictably unpopular, and the state has a record of voting out the ruling party. This time, a new pro-Jat party further dented the BJP’s prospects. BJP ran government for 15 years, or three terms, in Chhattisgarh and the people were obviously tired of chief minister Raman Singh even in the form of a Chawalwale Baba. So too with Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh, who ruled the state non-stop for 13 years. Democracy is about change. It was time to vote for change in these two states.
Yet, the contrast is noticeable in Telangana, where chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao rode his TRS to a spectacular second-time win with increased margins, seats and vote share. Chandrababu Naidu who came scouting back to Hyderabad to join hands with the Congress to prove a point and take on his old rival, learned a bitter lesson with outright rejection by the nativist electorate. Change was the ‘mantra’ in Mizoram too, where long-standing leader and chief minister for many terms Lalthanhawla was humiliated out of office this time with a biting defeat from both constituencies he contested.
The spectacular come-back of the Congress, the vote shares it retains in the Hindi belt despite years of odds, the new legitimacy that Rahul Gandhi as Congress leader managed to acquire from this hard-earned success is something the BJP cannot easily dismiss. The Gujarat assembly polls as also the ouster from power in Punjab were wake-up calls for the BJP that was drunk with power. Karnataka sent a new warning to the saffron party. Here now is proof it has to fight every inch to make a mark in the 2019 polls.
