After BJP’s defeat in 3 states, only 51% Indians now live under its rule

With yesterday’s election performance, the Congress now has a government or is part of the government in five states–Punjab, Karnataka, MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) losing power in three Hindi-heartland states–Madhya Pradesh (MP), Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh–the population under BJP rule has dropped by 254 million, from nearly 888 million (71% of India’s population) in 2017 to nearly 634 million (51% of the population) in December 2018.

The BJP now has a government–or is part of the government–in 16 states, up from seven states in May 24, 2014, when the party came to power at the Centre: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.

At its peak, the BJP had governments (or was part of the government) in 21 states.

With yesterday’s election performance, the Congress now has a government or is part of the government in five states–Punjab, Karnataka, MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh–with 21% of the population, up from.two states with 7% population in 2017.

The Congress lost elections in Mizoram, where the Mizo National Front won 26 seats in a 40-member assembly. In Telangana, the incumbent Telangana Rashtra Samithi was voted back to power with 88 seats in the 119-member assembly.

Other parties are in power in seven states–Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, Mizoram, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Jammu & Kashmir is under Governor’s rule.

Of 678 seats in MP, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram–which account for a sixth or 15.2% of India’s population–the Congress won 305 seats, and the BJP won 199 seats, Election Commission data show.

The BJP lost 180 seats that it won in 2013, and the Congress gained 162 across three state assemblies–Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh–as results were declared on December 11, 2018, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of electoral data, as we reported on December 12, 2018.

In 2013, the BJP won 377 seats and the Congress 118 in the three Hindi-heartland states. The BJP had no seats in Mizoram in 2013, and this was the first election for Telangana, which was created in 2014.

This means the BJP lost 48% seats it won in 2013, and the Congress gained 137%, we reported.

In MP, the vote shares of the BJP and the Congress were 41% and 40.9%, respectively. In 2013, the comparable vote shares were 45% and 36%, we reported on December 12, 2018.

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As BJP loses 3 states to Congress, battle for 2019 has become more exciting

The assembly elections in five states have shown that the BJP can be shaken up, even defeated, by strong, strategic opposition alliances.

After the victory of the Congress in all three Hindi heartland states in the tightly-fought assembly elections, some contours about the political scenario in the next few months are becoming sharper. With general elections barely six months away, both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition parties will have drawn lessons from the results and the voting patterns.

The coming days will see the granular details being discussed and analysed, but it is now apparent that the big themes of these elections were three: rural distress is real and can impact voting; religious polarisation is not a big vote catcher beyond keeping the faithful energised; and also, the BJP can be shaken up, even defeated, by strong, strategic opposition alliances.

Farmers all over the country are hurting and where they saw an effort to acknowledge and alleviate their problems, they rewarded the government, such as in Telangana where cash transfers to farmers were made by the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti. With the old fervour for Telangana having subsided, sub-nationalism was not a particularly potent theme the way it was in the last elections in 2014.

Shivraj Singh Chauhan tried to position his state as a place where agriculture was doing well, but the firing on farmers in Mandsaur in June 2017 was a black mark. Even so, his personal popularity has held and he must have got the support of some sections of the rural electorate.

The lesson for states and for the Central government is therefore loud and clear – you ignore the farmer at your own peril. Expect more sops being offered to farmers in the coming months, though whether it will make any real difference remains to be seen.

The spate of lynchings may have pleased the hardcore Hindutva types, but it cannot swing the voter angry with the government, as was seen in Rajasthan. Vasundhara Raje had alienated several sections of the electorate and the voters have taught her a lesson. The Yogi Adityanath brand of spreading hate can be counter-productive – no doubt voters of Telangana were not impressed with his promise to change the name of Hyderabad or to ensure that the Owaisis would run away from the state like the “Nizam had done”, a historical untruth. If the BJP plans to use Adityanath in the run-up to the 2019 elections, it may want to reconsider how and where they deploy him.

The opposition parties must have taken note of these developments and swift calculations must be going on about positioning and tactics for the 2019 elections. The show of unity two days before the results, where almost all opposition leaders, including Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal showed up but Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati did not, is a precursor of the times to come.

Business Standard

BJP’s loss of Hindi belt to Rahul’s new image: 7 poll result takeaways

Electoral contests in the immediate future won’t be sure-fire saffron walkovers. Each seat in every state could witness tough fights.

The winter of 2018 has sent a chill up the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) spine, and Christmas has come early for the 133-year-old Congress party. At the time of writing, it looks as though in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the incumbent BJP regimes have been toppled by the Congress in head-to-head contests.

Telangana, one of India’s youngest states, has elected nativist Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and a decade-old Congress government has been dislodged by rival Mizo National Front (MNF) in Mizoram. Bottomline 2018: Congress 3, Others 2, BJP 0.

This is a turn of the screw from the relentless triumphalism of the BJP: Suddenly voters seem to have woken to a wider range of political choices beyond Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party boss Amit Shah. Electoral contests in the immediate future won’t be sure-fire saffron walkovers: each seat in every state could witness tough fights.

Here are the major takeaways from the winter polls.

One, BJP’s losses in its Hindi strongholds show that the carefully-crafted image of Modi-Shah as election-winning geniuses, is bust. This isn’t for lack of trying. Both campaigned with relentless toxicity, pitching these elections as a contest between Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi, rather than an exercise to vote in different state governments.

Two, Congress has more than doubled the number of big states where it holds power: from two (Karnataka and Punjab) to five. Apart from boosting morale, an important ingredient for a party which has lived with disappointments for much of three years, this outcome might boost campaign finance for summer’s general elections.

Three, the image of Rahul Gandhi, widely spread by BJP’s propaganda machine, as an entitled (‘naamdar’), hapless and lazy ‘Pappu’ might turn around. BJP’s spin-meisters will need to ask how a mere Pappu could beat mighty Modi-Shah on their turf. In the future, it might not be a great idea for the BJP to pitch contests as personalised slugfests.

Four, voters have punished BJP regimes for administrative incompetence and callous policymaking. The roots of these defeats can be traced back to Modi’s bewildering decision to destroy 86% of currency in circulation overnight, announced November 8, 2016.

In a country where 98% of all transactions are conducted in cash, where 93% of the workforce operates in the ‘unorganised’, cash-only sector and formal banking is spread thin on the ground, Modi’s ‘notebandi’ hit the poor where it hurts most.

A landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh in early 2017 convinced BJP strategists that demonetisation was a killer electoral app. There is evidence that UP’s poor were misled to vote BJP by a feeling of schadenfreude – happiness at the misery of others. But by the beginning of this year, that warm glow had been replaced by seething anger.

Between January and November, by-elections were conducted in 13 assembly and Lok Sabha seats in seven states. Of these, Congress won three seats, its allies won five, BJP topped only two and in seven seats its incumbent netas lost to other parties.

Business Standard

Pappu has become Param Pujya, Raj Thackeray on Rahul after poll results

The MNS chief said that the party was bound to be defeated because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah’s behaviour.

As the Congress party has emerged victorious in Rajasthan, and is also poised to sweep Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh elections, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) Chief Raj Thackeray said that Congress president Rahul Gandhi who was referred to as ‘Pappu’ (colloquial Hindi word for dumb kid) by his opponents has now become ‘Param Pujya’ (most revered).

“Rahul Gandhi was alone in Gujarat, even in Karnataka and now too. Now Pappu has become Param Pujya.

Will his leadership be accepted at the national level, you are seeing it,” he said.

The MNS chief also took a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is inching towards its defeat in recently held state Assembly elections and said that the party was bound to be defeated because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah’s behaviour.

“It was bound to happen. .The way Amit Shah and Modi ji behaved in the past four years. It is all clear to the people of India now… they failed in all fronts and they have nothing to show…

so they are playing Ram Mandir card but people are smart enough,” he added.

Business Standard

Modi sarkar’s bure din: Body blow to BJP in states it ruled with majorities

The real question, however, is whether the BJP will draw the right lessons from the results at the end of 2018 for next year’s general elections and return to aspirational politics.

Whatever the final position of various parties turns out to be, it is evident that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered severe body blows in the three Hindi heartland states it rules with substantial majorities – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It is too far behind in Chhattisgarh and will most likely not form the next government. The trends as of noon on the counting day show the Congress in the lead in the other two states as well, although these races are quite tight. Rajasthan would likely see a Congress government, though with a smaller majority than it expected. If at all the BJP wins Madhya Pradesh, it would do so by the proverbial skin of its teeth. That should come as no surprise (except to diehard BJP supporters) as all opinion surveys and most exit polls had predicted this outcome.

It would be tempting to attribute this result to the anti-incumbency factor said to be prevalent in these states, perhaps twice over, because the BJP rules the Centre as well. Analysts may also cite the case of Mizoram, where the governing Congress is staring at a major loss to the Mizo National Front.

That would be lazy thinking. The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) will retain power in what appears to be a landslide, not anticipated even by its most optimistic champions. And not to forget, both Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh had not displayed any aversion to their ruling dispensations in the two previous elections. We need a better understanding of how elections are won or lost.

There are two ways of managing a contest, including elections. The first is to show the best side of the contesting entity, what good it has done or is capable of and promising to do. The other is to count the faults of the opponent, by implication claiming oneself to be the less bad one. History not just in India but the world over provides us numerous examples of the positive approach being rewarded with success and hardly anywhere the fear of the other has an overwhelming appeal. This is because there could be consensus on what constitutes good – prosperity, stability, peace and a comforting sense of well-being. But the negatives are somewhat relative: A scion succeeding the parent is not always considered a bad thing because that is the natural order of things. Similarly, in a country mired in influence peddling, corruption is a fact of life and bothersome only if affects the voter’s immediate existence.

Indira Gandhi had her greatest electoral triumph in 1971 because she was able to highlight the good she had done. Popular perception was that both bank nationalisation and ending privy purses were actions contributing to the common good. Her opponents were seen as a band of ragtag leaders desperately in search of issues. Even in these elections, the TRS government successfully projected its record, be it in making Hyderabad an exciting metro, or addressing the farm distress with loan waivers and the rythu bandhu schemes, or providing access to affordable housing, to gain handsomely at the hustings.

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