The grand old party can give the recent results of Assembly elections any spin it wants, but it cannot wish away the reality that it has been steadily losing ground nationally. Denial will not help anymore
Now that the results of the latest round of Assembly elections are at hand, the shrinking base of India’s grand old party, the Congress, and the growing geographical spread of its most aggressive opponent, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is no longer a matter of speculation. When the changing political hues of the 29 States over the last five years are presented in graphic form, one realises that the BJP’s claim that it is now India’s one and only national party, cannot be contested.
Nor can one attribute BJP president Amit Shah’s claim that his party’s influence extends from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and from Kamrup to Kutch, to mere hyperbole. It is real and it is now staring us in the face, and those who are in denial belong to that shrinking minority of politically displaced persons (largely comprising acolytes of the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Marxists), who ruled the roost in Delhi’s corridors of power until May, 2014.
Despite all the media attention they get, their whining and groaning and the faux debates they triggered over alleged intolerance etc, has failed to make a dent as far as the BJP is concerned. Instead, by getting entangled with such frustrated elements, the Congress leadership is being seen as churlish and lacking in democratic etiquette, that would require every citizen and every political party to gracefully accept the people’s verdict. Further, the Congress high command’s dangerous liaison with ultra-left elements who raised anti-national slogans at Jawaharlal Nehru University and elsewhere, has completely compromised its democratic and nationalist credentials. By doing so, it has allowed its opponents to question its commitment to the unity and integrity of India.
Some would believe that the Congress leadership’s close proximity to the communists and its decision to even have an electoral alliance with the latter in West Bengal while fighting tooth and nail with them in Kerala, is not just unjustifiable but ridiculous. Nowhere in the world would you find a national political party adopt a policy of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds without any shred of embarrassment!
Therefore, apart from issues like leadership, poor political judgement and intra-party conflicts which have cost the Congress the two key States of Assam and Kerala, the party’s overall national image has taken a major hit in recent years because of the company that it keeps.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has won in just one of the four States that went to polls — Assam — yet there is much hype over its success because prior to this round of elections, it had just five seats in these State Assemblies. It now has 64. Also, its vote share has seen a spectacular jump from 11.50 per cent to 29.50 per cent in Assam; from six per cent to 10.50 per cent in Kerala; and from four per cent to 10.20 per cent in West Bengal.
In Assam, while the BJP on its own picked up 29.50 per cent of the vote, its alliance partners — the Asom Gana Parishad and the Bodoland People’s Front — mustered just over 12 per cent, taking the alliance’s vote share to around 42 per cent, thus establishing a clear margin of 11 per cent over the Congress. The Congress managed to secure just 31 per cent of the votes. This enabled the BJP-led alliance to win a record 86 seats in the 126-member State Assembly.
The party has done well in West Bengal and Kerala as well. In the former, it has won three seats, but more importantly garnered 10.20 per cent of the vote. In Kerala, the alliance it headed bagged 14.40 per cent of the vote and the party finally opened its account with one seat. Tamil Nadu was the only State where the party could not make any dent.
Despite its comfortable victory in Kerala, the left Front is hardly in a celebratory mood because of its disastrous showing in West Bengal, which was its biggest stronghold for close to four decades. The issue at hand was the fateful decision taken by the left to have an electoral alliance with the Congress. This is being described as a ‘historic blunder’ by political pundits, both within the left’s ideological ambit and outside, and sympathisers of the left Front.
As a result of this decision, the left’s vote share has dropped from 40 per cent in 2011 to 26 per cent this time. It also reduced its seats in the State Assembly from 61 to 31. The decimation in West Bengal has robbed the left Front of the joy of savouring the success achieved in Kerala, despite its creditable performance.
Interestingly, while in Kerala, the margin between the two fronts has usually been very thin, it was different this time around because of the new kid on the block — the BJP. While the BJP on its own secured 10.50 per cent of the votes, its alliance secured 14.40 per cent of the votes, thus giving the contest a triangular look this time. like the BJP, the communists too had little or no presence in Tamil Nadu.
Finally, a word about the far-reaching changes that have taken place in the political complexion of various States over the last five years. The BJP was in power in six States on its own and in three others as part of a coalition in 2011. It has since expanded its control to 13 States, of which four are coalition Governments. On the other hand, the Congress was in power in 11 States on its own and in two other States as part of an alliance. Today, it controls just six States and is part of the ruling alliance in Bihar and in the Union Territory of Puducherry.
After the loss of Assam and Kerala, the only big State left with the Congress is Karnataka. Other than this State, it currently rules Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram. All these six States and Puducherry add up to a dismal 43 seats in the lok Sabha, one less than what it secured in the last lok Sabha election!
As we have often seen in electoral politics, one can never write off any political party, but as senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh has said, sometimes there is need for “a major surgery” to bring a political party back into the reckoning.