Once again, the BJP government is getting into the election mode in the last year of its term. They came with a huge majority, promised many things and fulfilled a few but yet many issues are unanswered and ignored. Ranting against Gandhi and Nehru is evident. But no Minister speaks about his or her own achievements. The failures of BJP government are hidden under the Nehru graves. We thought Narendra Modi’s government would be different; it was just an ordinary performance with extraordinary claims. The Prime Minister personally campaigned for many state elections since 2014, with BJP often fighting these in Modi’s name, some they made it and some lost very embarrassingly. Rahul Gandhi gave them a tough time in Karnataka and Gujarat. The NDA government was elected on the back of a Modi wave, but now the charm is fading on various levels. The Modi wave was created by a variety of factors such as anti-incumbency against UPA-II. Some big-ticket reforms have taken off the ground but are thought to be floundering now. People had too many expectations from the government, which the government has not been able to fulfil.
To win the next Lok Sabha election, the BJP needs 272 seats to form a government without depending on an increasingly volatile set of NDA allies. The 12 states — Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Together they offer 259 seats. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 205 seats out of its overall tally of 282 seats from this 12-state, 259-seat cluster. This is therefore, the make-or-break nugget for the BJP. In 2019 though, it can convincingly expect to win only around 150 seats from these 12 key northwestern states. That’s a fall of 55 seats over 2014 due to strong anti-incumbency, the Congress’ resurrection and the BJP’s inept governance across the region. Since the BJP has come to power, Shah has fought every election using Modi’s face. Modi is both the message and the only messenger. Even the Delhi Municipal elections were fought on Modi’s name. But inexplicably in Gujarat, Shah had brought in Adityanath, Sushma Swaraj, Smriti Irani and Shivraj Singh Chauhan as the star pracharaks and supporters. This was a rare event for Swaraj and Chauhan. But the bigger question is why were they being pressed into the service? Has the Modi magic begun to wane in Gujarat? Is the political climate changing after the nearly presidential sway that Modi exerted on the country? Consider the fact that the Surat traders took out a mammoth rally against the GST, chanting “Ek hi bhool, kamal ka phool (one mistake by voting for the BJP)”. Immediately, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had a Gujarat-specific GST press conference where the rates on khakra, namkeen, and man-made yarn were brought down to 5 per cent. Sources say that this was done after an angry Shah asked Modi to intervene following ground reports from Gujarat.
The five southern states are unlikely to provide a cushion. The BJP won 21 out of the 129 available seats in the south in 2014. Karnataka provided 17 of these. Again realistically, the BJP is unlikely to increase its tally significantly in 2019. Kerala may offer the odd extra seat. The four key eastern states of Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and Jharkhand could prove crucial for the BJP. In 2019, it will rely heavily on seat-sharing with ally JD(U) to sweep Bihar. Odisha promises a rich harvest too with dissent at the top of Naveen Patnaik’s BJD giving the BJP an opening. West Bengal remains a distant prospect though the BJP is likely to make inroads as the Left continues to lose traction. Meanwhile, with Jharkhand, where the BJP won 12 out of 14 seats in 2014, still a safe bet, the BJP could increase its tally in the 117-seat east cluster from 37 seats in 2014 to around 45 seats in 2019.
The Northeast has been a special focus for the BJP. The party can expect to raise its tally to around 14 seats in 2019. The seven union territories (Uts), including Delhi NCT, contributed 11 out of 13 available seats to the BJP in 2014. That total is unlikely to change much, though Delhi could swing partially towards the Congress, giving the BJP around 25 out of 38 seats on offer. Clearly, the BJP with 220-240 seats will not be able to form a government without the support of NDA allies. The Shiv Sena, TDP, LJP, SAD and others have varying degrees of problems with the BJP. To form a stable NDA coalition, the BJP would need at least 50 seats from its allies, taking the alliance’s tally to around 270-290. With the JD(U), but without the Shiv Sena, even that may prove difficult. The Rajinikanth factor in Tamil Nadu though could play a decisive role if he allies with the NDA, making Shiv Sena support redundant.
There just aren’t enough UPA allies to make up the slack as there were in 2004 with the Left’s 60 seats plummeting in 2014 to just nine. In 2019, the largest UPA ally will be the TMC with 30-odd seats. For BJP, the message is clear. Five consecutive mediocre Budgets have alienated the middle class. They count for little electorally but have a disproportionate influence on the political narrative.
The BJP’s policies over the past 45 months have been a mixed bag. In sum, it has failed to deliver maximum governance and minimum government. It has less than a year to reverse the slide. The Lok Sabha election may well be advanced to December 2018 along with the key state polls of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh in order to mask strong anti-incumbency.
