The 2019 Lok Sabha election will pit Prime Minister Narendra Modi against an Opposition united in its single-minded bid to evict the BJP from power. The outcome in Karnataka has emboldened it. The Modi-Shah juggernaut has for the first time shown signs of tactical vulnerability.
However, by handing over the chief ministership of the state to its junior post-poll alliance partner JD(S) with just 37 MLAs, the Congress has displayed both weakness and farsightedness; weakness because the concession will be seen by potential allies as the Congress willing in future to play second fiddle to regional parties. Farsightedness because in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, the Congress-JD(S) alliance could sweep the state’s 28 parliamentary seats.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election the Congress, fighting separately, won 40.80 per cent vote share in Karnataka but only nine seats. The BJP won 43 per cent vote share but, with 17 seats, recorded nearly double the Congress’s tally. The JD(S) was reduced to two seats with 11 per cent vote share. A Congress-JD(S) alliance in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll could thus emerge a big winner, blocking the BJP in its only southern beachhead.
BSP leader Mayawati and SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav have after their victories in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls, recognised the importance of the Index of Opposition Unity (IOU). An SP-BSP-Congress mahagathbandhan in Uttar Pradesh in 2019 is now a virtual certainty. That could spell trouble for the BJP which swept 71 out of 80 seats in UP in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and 312 of the 384 seats it contested in the 403-seat UP Assembly in the 2017 state election. A Mayawati-Mulayam alliance, with the Congress riding on its coat-tails, could significantly dent the BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha tally in UP. The Opposition, led by the Congress, is confident of applying the same formula in other states, bringing together ideological enemies to defeat the BJP.
Few other states, however, offer the same hospitable environment for a grand anti-BJP alliance as UP and Karnataka. Consider West Bengal. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has adopted an ambivalent attitude towards the Congress. After sweeping the violence-hit Panchayat polls last week, TMC chief Mamata Banerjee is keen to establish her own claim to lead a federal front, with or without the Congress. In Telangana, K Chandrashekar Rao too is in favour of a non-Congress, non-BJP federal front.
The trickiest state could be Maharashtra. The Congress and NCP were crushed by the BJP-Shiv Sena juggernaut in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. The BJP won 23 seats and the Shiv Sena 18 seats. Along with their allies the BJP-led alliance won 42 out of Maharashtra’s 48 parliamentary seats. With the BJP-Shiv Sena relationship fraying, the Congress-NCP sees an opportunity to wean the Sena away. If Maharashtra does develop into a triangular battle in 2019 between the BJP, Shiv Sena and the Congress-NCP combine, the BJP may lose an ally (Shiv Sena) in the Lok Sabha but gain seats. In the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, the BJP’s strike rate was over 95 per cent (it won 23 seats out of the 24 seats it contested). In sharp contrast, the Congress won just two seats of the 26 seats it contested while its ally NCP
won four of the 21 seats it contested.
The BJP is not free of worries either, with Rajasthan likely to slip out of its hands following the December 2018 Assembly election. Modi remains India’s most popular mass-level politician as the Karnataka result showed, with the BJP nearly tripling its tally from 40 seats in 2013 to 104 seats. But Modi is now increasingly vulnerable to coordinated Opposition attacks in key states. Fortunately for him, most states in the North and West feature binary contests between the Congress and the BJP.
Rahul Gandhi’s personal stock as a leader has fallen after the Congress plunged from 122 seats to 78 seats in the Karnataka Assembly poll. By ceding political space and leadership to the JD(S) and accepting HD Kumaraswamy as chief minister despite the Congress having twice as many seats as the JD(S), Rahul has sent a mixed message to regional satraps in West Bengal, Telangana and Odisha. While the 2019 Lok Sabha election will pit the BJP against most of the Opposition, the key question is who will be the face of the combined Opposition. Rahul has declared he is prepared to be prime minister if “the Congress does well in the 2019 general election.” After his capitulation to the JD(S) in Karnataka, however, Rahul’s overriding aim is to keep the BJP out of power even if it means sidelining the Congress and delaying his personal ambitions. He knows that rebuilding the Congress, state by state, is more important than winning 2019. Realistically, at 48 with age on his side, he has set his sights on 2024.
As a strategy, that is likely to confuse current and potential allies in the run-up to 2019. For example, an NDA castaway like the TDP will be in two minds about tying up with the Congress in Andhra Pradesh for the forthcoming Lok Sabha election. With Punjab and a precarious Karnataka in the bag, the Congress though has little option but to build more alliances with regional parties. The BJP for its part will be hoping that powerful regional leaders like Mamata Banerjee and others will produce a non-UPA federal front, leading to triangular contests which will help the BJP split votes.
The danger for the Opposition is that a Modi versus the Rest contest will transform the 2019 Lok Sabha election into a presidential contest. Given Modi’s charisma, that could tilt votes in his favour. Elections are a mix of mathematics and chemistry. Modi has plenty of the latter but could land up short on the former.
Minhaz Merchant
The author is an editor and publisher
Tweets @MinhazMerchant