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.

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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.

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Chhattisgarh, MP election result 2018 LIVE: BJP, Congress neck-and-neck

Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh election result 2018 will be declared today. Exit polls show a neck-and-neck fight between the BJP and Congress. Track LIVE updates on Assembly election vote counting.

Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh Assembly Election Result 2018 LIVE: Counting of votes has begun in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where exit polls predict the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are locked in a tight contest. In both the states, early trends reveal stiff competition between the two national parties.

In Chhattisgarh, BJP leader Raman Singh is seeking a fourth consecutive term as chief minister and the Congress aims to return to power after 15 years.

In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has ruled the state since 2003, seeking to retain the state under Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who has held the post since 2005. Chhattisgarh recorded a 76.60 per cent voter turnout when elections were held on November 12 and 20 to elect a new 90-member Assembly.

A coalition among Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), former chief minister Ajit Jogi's Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) and Communist Party of India (CPI) has added another dimension to the electoral politics of the state.

ALSO READ: Elections results 2018 LIVE updates: Counting of votes to begin in 5 states

Tight security arrangements have been made at the counting centres in all 27 districts of the Maoist-affected state. Raman Singh is contesting from the Rajnandgaon seat against Congress' Karuna Shukla, the niece of former BJP prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Madhya Pradesh registered a voter turnout of around 75% in the November 28 Assembly polls. The state has a 230-seat Assembly, where the majority mark is 116. The BJP contested on all 230 seats, the Congress fought on 229, leaving one to its ally, the Loktantrik Janata Dal.

The BSP and the Samajwadi Party (SP), which has allied with the Gondwana Gantantra Party, and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are the other players to watch out for as election results come. The BSP has fielded 227 candidates, while SP and AAP have fielded 51 and 208 candidates.

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State elections results: Counting to begin amid high-security arrangements

Most exit polls predicted a Congress resurgence in northern India, while TRS is likely to retain power in Telangana.

The results of the Assembly elections 2018 in five States — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram — will be out on Tuesday.

After the polling ended for the Telangana and Rajasthan Assemblies on Friday evening, most exit polls predicted a Congress resurgence in northern India.

All exit polls said Rajasthan was unlikely to break its 25-year-old habit of throwing out the incumbent government, with the Congress slated to win the state. Several exit polls predicted the Bharatiya Janata Party's 15-year-rule in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh could also end.

ALSO READ: Elections results 2018 LIVE updates: Counting of votes to begin in 5 states

However, most exit polls indicated the Bahujan Samaj Party-Ajit Jogi alliance in Chhattisgarh might have hurt the Congress, with the BJP poised to win a fourth successive win there.

A majority of the exit polls also predicted the incumbent Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) could retain the state and the electorate could boot out the 10-year-old Congress government in Mizoram.

Chhattisgarh

Counting of votes will be held on Tuesday for the Chhattisgarh Assembly polls, being viewed as a prestige battle for three-term Chief Minister Raman Singh of the BJP and the opposition Congress' fight for a resurgence.

Madhya Pradesh

Post-election surveys have predicted an interesting contest in Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP is trying for a consecutive fourth term. An Election Commission official said on Monday the counting would begin at 8 am and postal ballots will be taken up first followed by electronic voting machines at 8:30 am.

Rajasthan

Ahead of the counting of votes on December 11, arch-rivals BJP and the Congress have both claimed they are forming the government in Rajasthan, a state that has seen the two national parties alternate power over the last 20 years. While the BJP claimed it would get a majority in the state, irrespective of what the exit polls predicted, the Congress said it will go past the numbers the poll of polls projected for it.

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