Apart from massive media support and increased vote share in some states like Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, one factor that clearly tilted the scales in favour of the United Progressive Alliance in the Lok Sabha election was the presence of fledgling regional parties in three states.
An analysis of the results shows that between them, Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) in Andhra Pradesh, Vijay Kant’s Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) in Tamil Nadu and Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in Maharashtra helped split the anti-UPA vote and enabled the Congress and its allies mop up some 50 seats that did not belong to them.
It is true that the UPA would have been ahead of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) even without the help of these spoilers, but it’s eventual triumph would have been far less spectacular than it seemed on May 16. As in 2004, some fortuitous circumstances enabled the UPA to get ahead. Then, the NDA was knocked out because for one, the BJP lost 45 of its own seats, its numbers in the Lok Sabha falling from 182 to 137; NDA ally J Jayalalithaa was wiped out in Tamil Nadu and the Telugu Desam Party, with which the NDA had an understanding, was nearly wiped out in Andhra Pradesh. The prime beneficiary in the south was the UPA.
In 2009, the two southern states and Maharashtra came to the aid of the Congress. The launch of three regional outfits in these states proved advantageous for the alliance. A look at constituency-wise results in Andhra Pradesh shows that film star Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party cooked Chandrababu Naidu’s goose. The Congress got a whopping 33 of the 42 seats here, but PRP wrecked the chances of the TDP in as many as 31 constituencies. The Congress secured a clear majority in only one seat — Kadapa — where the chief minister’s son, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, got 53 per cent of the votes polled. In most of the other seats, Congress candidates secured 40 per cent of the votes or less. However, the presence of PRP helped the Congress sail through.
At the end of the day, PRP did not win a single Lok Sabha seat but it ruined Naidu’s chances. It took away 6.59 million votes (15.67 per cent). The TDP’s vote share was 10.48 million (24.93 per cent) and that of its alliance was 13.50 million (33.50 per cent). The Congress on the other hand secured 16.37 million votes (38.95 per cent). So it might have taken a major hit if PRP had not played the spoiler. This is surprising because the state government had ensured excellent delivery of social sector schemes including emergency medical assistance, health insurance and pensions for senior citizens and other deserving persons in families below the poverty line. Also, there was no visible anti-incumbency sentiment.
In Tamil Nadu too, a spoiler came to the UPA’s rescue. Of the 39 constituencies in this state, the presence of film star Vijay Kant’s DMDK enabled the UPA to win at least 10. In the DMDK’s absence, the UPA could have ended up with just 18 seats against the 28 it managed to win. The DMDK, like the PRP did not get a single seat, but it had over three million votes (10.11 per cent). This hurt the alliance led by Jayalalithaa’s party. In this state, the DMK’s victory was devoid of ambiguity in just four constituencies — Vellore, Tiruvannamalai, Thanjavur and Madurai — where it bagged over 50 per cent of the votes polled. The fate of many Congress candidates including home minister P Chidambaram could have been different without the DMDK. He scraped through by just 3,354 votes over his AIADMK rival in Sivaganga, where the DMDK polled 60,054 (eight per cent) of the votes. In many more constituencies the DMDK tilted the balance to favour the Congress.
Maharashtra is the third state where a new regional outfit made the difference. The Congress (17) and the Nationalist Congress Party (eight) between them secured 25 seats against the 20 seats bagged by the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. The Congress-NCP alliance secured 14.38 million votes (38.89 per cent). The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance on the hand got 13.01 million votes (35.17 per cent). Raj Thackeray’s MNS acted as spoiler. It won 1.50 million votes (4.07 per cent) and impaired the chances of the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in nine constituencies.
Still, there is no denying that the Congress with 119 million votes (28.55 per cent) is way ahead of the Bharatiya Janata Party that secured just 78.40 million votes (18.80 per cent). The gap between the two has now increased to over 40 million votes in a national election.
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