Rivals vanquished, but will they ever learnIJ
It is 2014 all over again for the Bharatiya Janata Party, at least in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The party has registered massive wins in both these States, setting the stage for the grand battle of the 2019 lok Sabha election. Not even the most ardent supporters of the BJP must have imagined the scale of victory that the voters of the two States have given it in the Assembly polls. It's been such that the party's rivals have no excuse to offer, let alone suggest credible explanations. The reasoning is simple enough, though: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's wave had not ebbed since two-and-a-half years ago — and if it had, it returned just in time with a vengeance. And, the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance as well as the Bahujan Samaj Party simply had no answer to this surge. But while the Prime Minister led from the front and his personal political goodwill brought the voters to his side, campaign strategists such as party president Amit Shah and State party leaders worked to a plan in a focused and committed manner. They got their caste arithmetic right and adroitly exploited the opponents' weaknesses. The huge margin of victory clearly indicates that the party managed to win over the support of disparate castes — from the upper to the backward and even the Scheduled Castes — in varying measures.
The party went to the people without a chief ministerial candidate whereas both the Samajwadi Party-Congress and the BSP had chief ministerial faces. But then, as the results have shown, who needs a chief ministerial candidate when Narendra Modi is the poster boy! Over the next few days, political pundits will be busy analysing the results threadbare, but they are likely to come to the same core conclusion about the Prime Minister's un-faded charisma and the absence of credibility in his rivals. Interestingly, Saturday's results have busted a myth that had been generated in recent months, especially after the BJP suffered defeats in Delhi and Bihar Assembly elections: That the party does well when it directly confronts the Congress, but fails when faced with formidable regional opponents. The BJP has humiliated not one but two strong regional contenders in Uttar Pradesh, with one being ousted from power.
The victory in Uttarakhand is as sweet for the BJP. Not too long ago, it had to taste embarrassment when its plans to topple the Congress Government had come a cropper. Additionally, it had to silently tolerate a whiplash from the judiciary. But here's where the difference between the BJP and the Congress comes. While Chief Minister Harish Rawat and the Congress leadership, including that at the central level, got complacent and gloated over the setback to their foe, the BJP began the groundwork to tap into the simmering public discontent against the regime, which existed for a variety of reasons, including shoddy relief and rehabilitation work in the wake of the natural disaster that had recently struck the hill State. Senior local level BJP leaders in consultation with the party leadership in Delhi, established contacts with dissident Congress leaders and won over their backing. Besides, the BJP went to the people, effectively highlighting the incumbent Congress regime's shortcomings at the grassroots. And the Congress leadership did not even seem to have noticed the undercurrents that were building against it.
If Saturday was the Modi-Amit Shah day, it was also the day when Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's inept leadership got, yet again, disclosed. The party had been given a bonanza in Uttar Pradesh, with more than 100 seats to contest. Rahul Gandhi led the campaign jointly with Samajwadi Party's Akhliesh Yadav and ended up not just grossly underperforming but also pulling down his partner. There hasn't been a single major election that the Congress has won under Rahul Gandhi's leadership — Bihar can hardly be considered the Congress vice president's trophy. It's clear that he has failed to offer the party a credible leadership — and one is not even comparing his skills with that of Indira Gandhi or even Rajiv Gandhi; he has failed to follow in the footsteps of Sonia Gandhi who learned the ropes faster than her rivals had thought she would. The party's win in Punjab — the only one in the five that went to polls where the Congress has registered a convincing victory — should be attributed to both Captain Amarinder Singh's leadership and the Aam Aadmi Party's failure to perform to expectations. Saturday's results demonstrate that Rahul Gandhi is no match for the Modi-Amit Shah combine. Had he been heading any other party, he would have been shown the door by now.
Needless to add, the Saturday verdict is a major blow to both the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. In the 2014 lok Sabha election, both had been decimated, with the latter failing to win even one constituency. And now that Mayawati's party has finished a distant third, it has a herculean task ahead to pick up the pieces by 2019. As for the Samajwadi Party, interesting developments can be expected. For one, Akhliesh Yadav is certain to be questioned on the wisdom of not just aligning with but also being generous to a party (the Congress) which had lost national credibility and also had little value to bring to the table. The other development could be a return of assertiveness of the Samajwadi Party old guard which Akhliesh Yadav had sidelined. It's possible that Shivpal Yadav will seek to re-establish his hold over the party following the defeat. If his attempts are thwarted, he could well carry out his threat of forming a new party that will be pitted against the Samajwadi Party. Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav's stand on these issues will be interesting to watch. For now, the conch sounds in the BJP's favour.