Politics
BJP and the playbook of disruption: What lies ahead for upcoming polls
Summary
- One of the themes running through the BJP’s strong start in the ongoing five-year state election cycle is splintering the Opposition and upending established structures by any means. Expect more of that script for the six state elections in the coming year or so.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) juggernaut rolls on, carving out electoral paths that are creative, combative, and sometimes even contentious. In this ongoing five-year cycle of state elections, which began with the national elections in May 2024, the BJP has won five of nine states. Compared to the previous result in those states, the BJP retained power in two (Arunachal Pradesh and Haryana), and in three, it upended an incumbent (Odisha, Maharashtra and, now, Delhi).
Each win has increased the BJP’s hegemony in the Indian political landscape, giving it even greater control over power structures and institutions. It has also delivered crushing blows to several regional parties of significance in their bastions and weakened the other principal national party, the Congress, making it an object of ire among its partners.
Also read: Delhi poll results in charts: BJP returns to power after 27 years
One strand that runs through these BJP wins is disruption, by any means. Given the electoral rewards this strategy has delivered, and the tall electoral challenges that lie ahead over the next year (West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala), expect this playbook to continue.
The full might of that playbook was seen in Delhi, India’s 19th largest territory by population and 32nd largest by area but 11th largest by economic size. As the national seat of power, it also acquires outsized visibility. The BJP last ruled Delhi between 1993 and 1998, with three chief ministers taking turns. Even as the BJP became the epicentre of political power after 2014, this tiny state held out. It became the site of the feisty, alternative politics of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), broadly emerging around the same time.
Delhi belly
It's taken a lot to break the AAP’s hold over Delhi. Boundaries have been tested on the unique Centre-state separation of powers in Delhi, which hamstrung decision-making for elected representatives. The AAP’s chief minister and deputy chief minister were jailed for a policy decision. AAP MLAs were routinely charged with a variety of crimes and infringements. AAP MLAs and leaders were poached. Delhi’s municipal corporations first bled badly and were then merged into a single entity, which had its own dysfunctionalities.
Also Read: Why Modi’s BJP has raced ahead of Kejriwal’s AAP in the battle for Delhi
When the dust settled, the BJP had wrested power from the AAP. The difference in seats in the 70-member assembly—the BJP’s 48 versus the AAP’s 22—suggests a one-sided contest. It was much closer. In terms of overall vote share, the difference was only 3.6 percentage points (the BJP’s 47.2% versus AAP’s 43.6%). In 18 seats, the difference in margin was less than 5%: 12 of them going to the BJP, including six with a margin of less than 2%.
Alliance matters
This matters in the context of alliances. In Delhi, the AAP fought the 2024 general elections in alliance with the Congress as part of the broad INDIA grouping. In Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats, at the assembly constituency (AC) level, this was split into 40 ACs for the AAP and 30 ACs for the Congress.
However, the two parties did not extend their alliance to the 2025 state election, where the AAP-Congress combined vote share (49.9%) was greater than that of the BJP (47.2%). The BJP won 14 seats with margins smaller than the votes that the Congress got. This included New Delhi, where AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal lost to Parvesh Verma of the BJP, with Sandeep Dikshit of the Congress coming in third.
In this state election cycle, Delhi was the third state, after Haryana and Maharashtra, where friction was rife around alliances among parties that make up the INDIA bloc. The BJP won all three states.
The next state election is scheduled for late 2025 in Bihar, where the BJP drew from its playbook of disruption and orchestrated a mid-term change in power in January 2024. Bihar will be a multi-party, alliance-based contest, and the parties in the INDIA bloc will need to move generously and decisively to strike common ground.
Bihar is one of the six state elections scheduled over the next 12-15 months. In three of these, the BJP is in power, all in some degree of alliance. In the other three, it has never been in power. While it made considerable inroads in West Bengal in the last state election, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have been tough to crack.
Also Read: Is discipline in BJP fraying with loss of face at polls?
Assam aside, the other five states have strong regional parties. And they would have seen how the BJP used chaos and disruption to turn the tables in Delhi.
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