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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  Narendra Modi, Amit Shah deliver a Saffron Sunday
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Narendra Modi, Amit Shah deliver a Saffron Sunday

BJP's performance in Maharashtra and Haryana makes it the moving force in politics; raises serious questions about future of the Congress

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah during the party’s parliamentary committee meeting after posting victories in Haryana and Maharashtra assembly elections. Photo: APPremium
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah during the party’s parliamentary committee meeting after posting victories in Haryana and Maharashtra assembly elections. Photo: AP

New Delhi: If the historic verdict on 16 May pitchforked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into power at the centre, the outcome of the just concluded assembly elections to Haryana and Maharashtra has made it the moving force in contemporary Indian politics.

In Haryana, the BJP scored an outright win; in Maharashtra it came in just short of the halfway mark—opening up the option of reuniting with the Shiv Sena, its erstwhile ally of 25 years.

In neither state did the BJP have a strong local face, a potential chief ministerial candidate. Nor did it have a strong alliance partner.

Just as important as what the mandates in Haryana and Maharashtra do for the BJP are what they don’t do for the Indian National Congress.

They revive the debate on the future of the Congress and the role of its leadership defined around party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president and political heir apparent Rahul Gandhi. In the 16th general election, the Congress managed to end up as the second-largest political party (still not enough to inherit the mantle of the leader of the opposition, though); in the just-concluded elections, it has the ignominy of coming in third in the two states.

Take the two together, and the result could be an emboldened BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which is likely to push for significant change in policies. Perhaps in anticipation, within hours of the closing of the two polls, the NDA unambiguously signalled its intent to focus on business—and the prime minister formally launched the labour law changes the government had previously initiated.

Over the weekend, it followed up by announcing the decontrol of diesel prices. By ending the diesel subsidy (the petrol subsidy was withdrawn by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance), the NDA has implicitly signalled that the open-ended approach to subsidies is on the way out. The approach, going by the linking of the cooking-gas subsidy with Aadhaar (the Unique ID launched by the previous government), may be one that is need-based. That would mean a targeted subsidy regime.

In the first five months of its rule, the NDA has focused on improving operational efficiency—by abandoning cabinet committees, allowing self-attestation and so on. Now, given that it has retained the political momentum (or even moved it up a notch), it is likely to push for overhaul of policies. And this comes at a time when the macroeconomic environment has improved with a softening of global commodity and oil prices.

The gamble

In the run-up to the polls, it looked like an open-and-shut case for the BJP in Haryana. In Maharashtra, it was expected that the party, despite the abrupt demise of Gopinath Munde, would romp home in alliance with the Shiv Sena. That changed after the BJP split with the Sena. The Congress then split with its partner, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and all of a sudden, Maharashtra became a four-way fight (five, if one were to count the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena that has been decimated in the polls).

Haryana was always a three-way contest.

The BJP’s response was to make Modi the centrepiece of its campaign. Simultaneously, the election machine of Amit Shah, the party president, was pressed into action. And like in the general election, the duo complemented each other’s efforts. Shah’s stamp was evident in the meticulous selection of candidates, ensuring due weightage to candidates belonging to the Other Backward Class—the new currency in Indian politics—and constituency-wise planning. And Modi continued to push his development agenda that had worked so well in the Lok Sabha elections.

Not only did the BJP not possess a strong local leader of the calibre of Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan or Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, it was also up against history. In Haryana, it had four legislators in the outgoing assembly and had never logged a vote share above 10%. In Maharashtra it had always been the junior partner in its alliance and was contesting 160 seats for the first time.

Modi led the campaign, speaking at 27 meetings in Maharashtra and 10 in Haryana, among the highest by any national leader.

It was clear that the party’s performance in the two states would be an appraisal of Modi’s appeal as Prime Minister and Shah’s organizational and campaign capabilities.

The victory has consolidated the duo’s grip over the party.

Data reveal that the political momentum continues to remain with the BJP. If one were to disaggregate the party’s Lok Sabha performance, albeit in partnership with the Shiv Sena, into assemblies that make up each parliamentary constituency, the party should have won 132 seats.

The Shiv Sena should have won 100, the Congress 16 and the NCP 26.

The BJP, despite its split with the Shiv Sena, has won 122. The Sena has won 63.

Interestingly, the Congress and the NCP have both improved their performance when compared with the Parliamentary elections, winning 42 and 41 seats respectively.

Similarly, in Haryana, the BJP, based on the 2014 general election, should have won 52 seats in the assembly segment. Its final tally was, like in Maharashtra, a tad below at 47 seats. Importantly, its vote share at 33% was more than three times its best ever performance.

Political realignment

An immediate fall out of the emergence of the BJP as the strongest political force in Indian politics at the expense of the Congress is that there is now a vacuum in the opposition space. The Aam Aadmi Party, by skipping this round of elections, may have blundered politically.

The relegation of the Congress to the third spot in Maharashtra and Haryana may revive the debate regarding the leadership of the party. Equally worrying for the Congress is its rapidly shrinking electoral footprint. It is now limited to Karnataka and Kerala in the South, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the North and Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Mizoram in the North East. Its vote share has dropped dangerously close to a fifth, raising the odds against a revival.

Together, the BJP’s win in the general election and its performance in the two assembly elections may make it a legitimate challenger to very strong regional players such as the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and Biju Janata Dal in Odisha—where so far the BJP has a limited presence.

It also sets in motion a larger plan of the BJP to gain control of the Rajya Sabha over the next two years. At the moment it is well short of the halfway mark and finds itself vulnerable in negotiating passage for contentious legislation—like the move to amend insurance laws to raise limits for foreign investors, which was forcibly referred to a select committee.

The BJP will face its next test in the upcoming winter session of Parliament. It would want to use the session fruitfully to ensure passage of pending legislation, just as the opposition, considerably weakened, will be keen to give it a bloody nose to make up for the humiliating reversal in the assembly elections.

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Published: 19 Oct 2014, 10:19 PM IST
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