BJP has its work cut out in its strongholds a good effort in Bengal by-polls notwithstanding
When the ruling party loses all three seats (two lok Sabha and one Assembly) to the main Opposition party in by-polls, that too in an election year, it is safe to say the hitherto incipient signs of anti-incumbency have definitively metamorphosed into established fact. The Vasundhara Raje Administration in Rajasthan must recognize what neutral observers have been saying for a while now — there is an increasing disconnect between the BJP and the voting public and the emphatic wins for the Congress in the lok Sabha seats of Alwar and Ajmer, and the Mandalgarh Assembly seat could not have happened without a massive swing away from the BJP whatever spin anyone may put on it.
Crucially, for the BJP, which faces re-election in 10 months, the Congress led in all 17 Assembly seats where polling was held (eight each in the two Parliamentary constituencies and the Assembly seat). Raje had led the party to a three-fourth majority in the last State poll and Rajasthan has delivered a perfect score for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2014 General Election with all 25 seats from the State going to its kitty. BJP insiders admit that the situation is pretty grim and they are worried about the demonstration effect this ‘feel-bad’ mood may have on the two other BJP-ruled States of Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh which also go the polls later this year and where the incumbents, Shivraj Chauhan and Raman Singh respectively, have served multiple terms as Chief Minister. The mis(handling) of the Padmaavat row, incidentally, and contrary to glib conclusions, seems to have played only a very marginal role in the electoral setback for the BJP. The intensity of the voter rebuff in the Alwar seat, for example, where the Congress not only overturned the BJP’s lead of nearly 2,84,000 votes from the 2014 election, but also won by a healthy margin of close to 2,00,000 votes, means the swing away from the ruling party was to the tune of about 4,80,000 votes. Sure, local factors would have been in play, but they are in play in every poll. The BJP needs to introspect on why the electorate has turned upon it with such a vengeance at the hustings. It may be too late for Rajasthan, but Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh are still in play.
The bigger national worry for the party brass is that across North and West India, where it maximised both vote share and seats in the 2014 lok Sabha poll, anti-incumbency seems to have set in and there is only so much the Prime Minister’s popularity can do to salvage the situation especially in light of a raucous Opposition campaign that may be light on facts but is single-minded in its aim. In fact, the creditable performance put in by the BJP in West Bengal, where it emerged as the albeit still very distant runner-up to a rampant Trinamool Congress with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s sway over the grassroots showing no signs of diminishing, is a perfect example of the Amit Shah-led growth of the party in areas where it had traditionally been weak or non-existent not being enough, just yet, to compensate for the losses it should expect in its strongholds. In both the lok Sabha seat of Uluberia and the Assembly constituency of Noapara in West Bengal, the BJP pushed the once-formidable left Front to third position and the Congress virtually out of the electoral frame. But given the moves afoot at the national level by leading Opposition figures to bring to fruition a dual strategy of one-on-one contests against the ruling regime at the Centre despite State-level contradictions between individual Opposition parties and preventing the BJP from stitching up alliances with too many regional players, Shah possibly faces his toughest test yet.