BJP wins state polls 4:1, AAP threatens Cong Opposition space

Winning the current round of Assembly polls 4:1, including in crucial Uttar Pradesh, the ruling BJP on Thursday delivered a body blow to the Congress ahead of the next Lok Sabha polls while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the new kid on the block, marched ahead to win its second state Punjab and is quickly galloping ahead to occupy the space of the main Opposition party.

The BJP scored a hat-trick in Goa, winning the election for the third consecutive term even in the absence of its tallest state leader Manohar Parrikar while the saffron party's margin of victory against the Congress was quite big in Uttarakhand as well as Manipur, where it retained power for the second time in a row.

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Understandably, the BJP, which has found it easier to defeat the Congress than the regional parties, was quick to dismiss the AAP as its main rival at the national level even as the latter went on to project Arvind Kejriwal as the prime challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress, which like the AAP is now in power in only two states, downplayed the poll outcome even as Rahul Gandhi promised to "learn" from the verdict.

While the G-23 ginger group within the party, which had written to Sonia Gandhi seeking "radical changes" two years ago, huddled to take stock of the new situation, expelled Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha said it was time that Sachin Pilot be made Congress President as he was "hard-working, a 24x7 Congress leader, accessible, hungry to win, and an outstanding communicator". Rahul Gandhi's detractors within the party have faulted him for these very qualities but the hint seems to have already gotten lost.

There are murmurs that while Modi managed to deliver UP to the BJP and Kejriwal delivered Punjab to the AAP, the Gandhis were not able to deliver results for the Congress. And this comes after the party's UP election campaign was directly led by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra while Rahul Gandhi was the national face of the party everywhere.

What deepened the sense of helplessness was not only the return of the BJP in UP but also the realisation that the Congress was now ceding the Opposition space to regional parties. The Congress, however, is still the prime challenger to the BJP in states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. There are nearly 200 seats where there is a straight fight between the BJP and the Congress.

While the BJP went to town highlighting the results as the success of the Modi model of governance, the AAP announced that it would take the Delhi model of governance across the country. The Congress had to "humbly accept the verdict" which it said was "against its hopes" and put the blame for the defeat in Punjab on the "anti-incumbency of the four-and-a-half-year rule of Captain Amarinder Singh but expressed satisfaction over "reviving" the party in UP at the ground level and promised "a thorough introspection" at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee.

However, the results will give fresh impetus to the demand for a leadership change in the Congress and the party's ginger group G-23 is now set to mount further pressure for radical changes in the party. Some fresh desertions also cannot be ruled out.

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The repeat victory of the 'double engine' government led by Yogi Adityanath came as a big boost to the ruling BJP, which had suffered reverses in a number of state polls in the last few years, the latest of which was its inability to halt the Mamata Banerjee juggernaut in West Bengal. The BJP victory in a party-ruled state in a post-pandemic poll comes on the back of a farmer agitation that continued for more than a year and a massive Opposition campaign that highlighted issues like unemployment. The result goes a long way in reassuring the BJP that it is still in a formidable position to take on rivals in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls that arrive in two years. The BJP campaign around Modi's development pitch and 'bulldozer Baba' Yogi Adityanath's tough administration (rashan and prashasan) worked well.

A buoyant Arvind Kejriwal took to the mikes to say, "First, the revolution took place in Delhi, then in Punjab and now, the revolution will take place across the country." However, the fact remains that Delhi and Punjab together have only 20 Lok Sabha seats (7 in Delhi and 13 in Punjab) and the AAP's showing in Goa and Uttarakhand was poor. The Congress was hopeful that it could at least defeat the BJP in Uttarakhand and Goa but the saffron party managed to buck the anti-incumbency factor and that is a clear indication of the iron grip the BJP has come to have.

The BJP is in a much stronger position in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, which go to the polls at the end of the year. Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland go to the polls in February next year, then Karnataka in May and Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana at the end of 2023. The Congress is in power only in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. The immediate impact of the results will be felt on the Presidential polls in July this year, where the Opposition's attempt to put up a united candidate has lost its sheen.

In UP, despite the SP's alliance with Jat party the RLD, the BJP managed to keep its hold. Trends suggest that the BJP managed to retain its hold among the non-Yadav backward classes and non-Jatav Dalit votes (some Jatavs as well) apart from its Brahmin Baniya, Thakur and other upper caste votes. The saffron party also managed to build a campaign around the 'goondaism' during the government of the Samajwadi Party whose core base was the muscular Yadav community.

The total decimation of the BSP (just one seat) seems to have helped the BJP in a big way in UP, particularly in the Jatlands of Western UP, where Mayawati's party had fielded a number of Muslim candidates. Despite its high-spirited 'Ladki Hoon Lad Sakti Hoon' campaign, the Congress could not make an impact and is set to win a lesser number of seats than its abysmal number of seven in the 2017 polls.

The BJP, which had won 50 per cent of the votes in UP in 2019, seems to have lost a fair portion of its votes but its ability to retain inroads among the Most Backward Class or Extremely Backward Class (non-dominant, further socially disadvantaged castes among OBCs), has remained by and large unchanged and a fair number of Dalit communities, including sections of Jatavs, have voted for the BJP in a poll in which the BSP led an unspirited campaign and the BJP fielded a large number of Jatav candidates.

An initial analysis of the trends showed that the votes of the BSP and the SP together in many seats in Western UP, Bundelkhand and even central UP outnumbered that of the BJP but there is no denying the fact that barring the identified caste votes (Yadavs for the SP, Jatavs for the BSP, Muslims as the strongest contenders against the BJP), the saffron party got the votes of most of the other castes. The SP did manage to widen its social net but not enough to defeat the BJP. The SP, which had won only 47 Assembly seats in 2017, is set to win nearly 130 seats, which is more than two-and-a-half times its past tally.

While the BJP's intact social coalition was the base, the icing on the cake came in form of Hindutva appeal, which the saffron party built up with the foundation of the Ram Temple, the Kashi corridor and selective statements about "rescuing" the Krishna Janmabhoomi at Mathura, besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Kedarnath visit. This was also evident in the swiftness with which the BJP moved in to douse the anger of priests in Kedarnath by repealing the Char Dham Devasthanam Board Act, which had brought nearly 50 temples there under state control.

Despite two chief ministers being changed in the run-up to the polls, the BJP managed to win Uttarakhand even though the Congress's CM face Harish Rawat was a veteran in comparison to the BJP's political greenhorn Pushkar Dhami. Both Dhami and Rawat lost in the polls. Clearly, it was the Modi factor that played out in the election result for the BJP. Internal dissensions within the Congress also worked to the advantage of the BJP. The Uttarakhand victory will be significant for the BJP as this has traditionally been a 'switch state', where the gear of power shifts every five years.

The tragedy for the Congress is that it cannot take any comfort in the decimation of the BJP-SAD in Punjab since a regional party has now occupied the ruling space. The Congress's record of wresting power back from a regional party has been poor, be it in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or Delhi. The AAP's massive victory in Punjab signals a shift in politics like in Delhi, which the Congress could find very difficult to turn back. The party's chief ministerial face Charanjit Singh Channi, the first Dalit chief minister of the state, lost the polls from both his seats in a state where Dalits comprise 32 per cent of voters. The Dalit dynamics of state politics did not help even the Akali Dal, which had a tie-up with Mayawati's BSP after a gap of 26 years to woo the Dalit voters.

In yearning for change, Punjab voters have put the past behind them, defeating not only Channi but also two more chief ministers in Captain Amarinder Singh and Parkash Singh Badal. The captain's prime challenger Navjot Sidhu has also lost. It's been a bloodbath.

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Buoyant AAP leader Raghav Chadha gave voice to the surging ambitions of the Delhi party saying, "Today, AAP has emerged as an alternative not only in Punjab but has emerged as a national alternative. AAP has emerged as a natural and national alternative to Congress." He hinted that from now on, Arvind Kejriwal had become the principal challenger to Narendra Modi nationally.

Manish Sisodia talked about the "direction that Arvind Kejriwal has given to the nation" and "the hope that has emerged at the national level with regard to Arvind Kejriwal" and how "the Kejriwal model of governance succeeded in Delhi and got a chance in Punjab as well".

The Congress, which was being attacked over Rahul Gandhi's leadership by the Trinamool Congress's Mamata Banerjee and other Opposition leaders, has now got another formidable challenger in Kejriwal. The results will further undermine the Congress's claim on the leadership of the Opposition space as the political landscape of the country seems to be turning into the BJP versus regional parties ahead of the next general elections.

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