What has changed between the Budget and Monsoon sessions that the government agreed to face a no-confidence motion? Well, the BJP/government—the upper echelons work as a seamless entity—got a straw poll done in the interim. A senior Cabinet minister, readily sharing the “positive feedback” he got in about 10 states, states, “Modi’s popularity is intact”. Even if “there are a few areas of disappointment, people are ready to back him for a second term as they see no alternative”.
So the TINA factor is easing away the despondency of the last session. Another minister, a 2014 inductee into the BJP, cites two elements that add to the optimism. One, a formidable war chest. The BJP is India’s richest party now, with an 82 per cent rise in its corpus funds. Two, it’s in control of the administration in most parts of India, “a tangible factor the Opposition is overlooking”.
But it takes only one election result or a small trigger for the national mood to change. And that’s keeping alive the talk of early polls, maybe in December, Amit Shah’s off-the-record denials notwithstanding.
Of the poll-bound states, it’s perhaps not Madhya Pradesh or Chhattisgarh but Rajasthan that holds the key. The disaffection with the Vasundhara Raje regime seems deep enough to offer an easy win for the Congress. In Madhya Pradesh, it’s a tight fight but the Congress is not exactly blessed with a unified command, nor has the alliance with the BSP been clinched. In Chattisgarh, renegade Congressman Ajit Jogi has more ammunition to leverage the anti-incumbency against Raman Singh. (Little wonder, Rahul Gandhi has been dialling Jogi’s number, much to the chagrin of the local unit!) However, Rajasthan may hold a mirror to which way North India would vote in 2019.
In this context, the BJP sees the PM’s reply to the no-confidence motion as an opportunity. Besides setting the template for a presidential-style face-off between Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi, it offers a canvas on which to paint its broad-brush themes. That’s where he can use, say, the Kashmir card.
The buzz around simultaneous polls segues right into this air of speculation. If the general elections are advanced to coincide with these three, and some BJP governments (like Haryana, Maharashtra) are sacrificed via early dissolution, strategic energies can be devoted to creating another Modi wave in a mini-referendum on his rule. Or so some regional satraps and NDA ministers would have us believe. Maybe even Odisha, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh can be persuaded to dissolve their Assemblies a bit early. (They usually have elections coinciding with the regular April-May schedule for LS polls.)
The Election Commission sees no constitutional bar, only logistical problems in holding near-simultaneous polls. (Not enough tamper-proof VVPAT machines, the new electoral rolls aren’t done yet.) The Opposition, however, will try its best to force the BJP into state-wise contests, and not a gladiatorial Modi vs Rahul fight. Only 11 states have a straight Congress-BJP fight—the rest of the landscape is studded with satraps who can give Amit Shah’s poll machine a run for its money. So it makes sense, even without a grand alliance, to open up the BJP on multiple flanks.
Much of this strategy hinges on how well the Uttar Pradesh quartet—SP, BSP, RLD, Congress—shapes up. Whether the GOP will be willing to scale down its ambitions in this vital state to embarrassingly low levels for the larger cause will be key. It may have to trade off seats in stronger states just to buy its place in the UP alliance and secure the pocketboroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli.
Outwardly, Shah retains his bullishness and claims the BJP will not do worse than 2014 in UP or elsewhere, but if recent bypolls are anything to go by, it could be mere posturing to keep cadre morale high. The BJP is clearly focusing on new places—West Bengal, Kerala, Odisha, the Northeast, even Telangana—to offset its anticipated losses in UP. Shah, otherwise a hard bargainer, may even cede far more seats than originally planned to Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP. He can’t afford the wily Nitish and the ultimate weathervane, Paswan, eyeing a shift to the UPA fold—that would impact voter psyche and media evaluations of its chances. As one of Shah’s backroom boys quipped, only slightly in jest, “We’re more interested in what the TV channels say than what the Opposition does!”
The South looms as virgin territory. Besides, in Odisha and Bengal, the BJP feels it has already become the main opposition. That’s why Naveen Patnaik will keep his BJD equidistant vis-a-vis BJP/Congress. (Test that during the trust vote.) Local Congress leaders may actually not mind an alliance with the BJD to save their parliamentary seats! But for Patnaik, a weak Congress is far more preferable as a main rival than an aggressive BJP. Just like Mamata prefers to have a BJP, clueless about Bengal politics, as its main rival and not the Left.
Bengal, though, seems willing to embrace saffron to an extent—Shah is eyeing 20 of its 42 seats! The Congress, on the other hand, stares at obliteration. The Left, also facing an existential crisis in parliamentary politics, is unlikely to repeat its tie-up with the Congress—even a pre-poll grand alliance is tricky for it. It has to maximise its score in Kerala, where its main opponent is the Congress, the BJP’s loud campaign notwithstanding.
In the Northeast, however, the BJP may not quite walk off with all the 25 seats. In fact, if the Citizenship Bill is passed this session, the NDA may not secure over 10-12 seats. That’s the final riddle in an interesting Lok Sabha poll where the Congress, for the first time, would contest less than 350 seats and the BJP will seek to make lightning strike a second time.
Santwana Bhattacharya
Political Editor, The New Indian Express
santwana.bhattacharya@gmail.com