The year gone by will be enshrined in the BJP’s annals for its spectacular success in two state polls, Delhi and Bihar, which it convincingly wrested against great odds. The new year began with a near-sweep in the prized Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation polls, where it seemed not so long ago that the BJP was doomed to be subordinate to old ally Shiv Sena.
For the BJP, a victory is just that—whether it is for a local body, state assembly or parliament—meant to be celebrated as not just something politically significant but as a morale booster. A message to the cadre to keep working because bigger triumphs are in sight if they keep at it. But this year, the BJP needs a stronger stimulant because most of the year’s elections might be more daunting for it than the ones just past. Up for grabs are three states where success has eluded it so far: West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
Data from the previous assembly elections in the states afford clues to the tasks before the BJP. Of the 294 assembly seats in West Bengal, the saffron party won just 77 of the 188 it contested in 2021 and registered a vote share of 39 percent. In contrast, victor Trinamool Congress walked away with 213 seats and a poll percentage of more than 48 percent.
Of Tamil Nadu’s 188 seats it contested in 2021, the DMK romped home with 133 and a vote share of 38 percent, while its ally Congress picked up 18 seats with 4 percent of the votes. The BJP won just four of the 20 seats it fought, cornering a bit less than 3 percent votes. In Kerala, the BJP was out for a duck despite contesting 115 seats and notching up more than 11 percent of the votes.
The east and the south don’t appear promising so far for the BJP. But given its distinctive ability to strategise in unforeseen ways, its capacity for hard work and, most importantly, a special skill to draw narratives that punch holes in the opponents’ campaigns that are often hard to fill, who knows what the impending elections hold for it and its adversaries?
West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are expected to vote in April-May. So we can be sure to be subject to several cacophonous exchanges in the coming months—between the BJP and the never-say-die Mamata Banerjee spoiling for a feud or two in Bengal; between a combative K Annamalai, presently the BJP’s best known face in Tamil Nadu, and the soft-spoken but laser-focused M K Stalin along with family scion Udayanidhi Stalin; and between the two entrenched blocs in Kerala, the UDF and the LDF.
At daggers drawn, the UDF and the LDF are resolute in not allowing space for a third player, certainly not the BJP. The RSS has constructed a network across the state over the years, but has not succeeded in translating its efforts into votes for its political progeny.
In recent years, the BJP’s storylines have successfully persuaded voters in the Hindi heartland, unless an opposition party offered a more convincing version like the Samajwadi Party’s in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh.
However, the dynamics shaping the elections vary. If Tamil Nadu’s politics is invariably dictated largely by alliances because of the multiple caste-based parties on the canvas, Bengal and to an extent Kerala are driven by narratives pivoting around Centre-state contradictions that have also impacted Tamil Nadu (the alleged imposition of Hindi, for instance).
In Bengal, unfazed by its losses in the 2021 assembly and 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP kick-started its offensive against Banerjee and Trinamool with an unwavering commitment to the Election Commission’s special intensive revision to purportedly identify the “infiltrators” from Bangladesh and “illegal” Rohingya settlers from Myanmar. It has gone to town about Trinamool’s “Muslim appeasement”, juxtaposing it with state-specific issues such as the corruption charges emanating from cash-for-jobs abuses and the rape-murder of a junior doctor at a Kolkata hospital, with legislative party leader Suvendu Adhikari at the campaign’s forefront.
The attacks culminated in an Enforcement Directorate raid on I-PAC, the private consultancy functioning as Trinamool’s principal database and back-up apparatus. The raid was enough to draw out the street-fighter in Banerjee, who confronted the raiders with her Trinamool warriors and put the officers on the defensive. In between, the BJP leadership’s numerous gaffes on Bengal’s cultural icons were grist to the Trinamool’s charge that the BJP has still not comprehended the state’s history and legacy—a point its state leaders couldn’t counter.
Perhaps realising that his digs on Banerjee didn’t go down well with voters in 2021, Narendra Modi advised his Bengal MPs to depict the SIR process in the “right” way without getting boastful about the numbers or belligerent about the intention. The BJP’s apprehension that was the Matua community—dominant in at least 30 of the 294 assembly seats—which the party had nurtured as a vote bank, was rattled by the SIR exercise because many who had migrated from Bangladesh did not have the required documents. As of now, Bengal seems a long haul for the BJP.
In Chennai, where the BJP’s priority is ostensibly putting together a broad anti-DMK front, the latest acquisition—or rather, reacquisition—was the T T V Dhinakaran-helmed Amma Makkal Munnettra Kazhagam for the NDA. Dhinakaran revived the legacy of former AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa and promised to honour it—an indication that Dravida politics principally survives on the memories of K Karunanidhi for the DMK and Jayalalithaa for the NDA.
But getting actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam would be the icing on the cake for the BJP, except that Vijay’s anti-BJP utterances and the censor certificate controversy over his film Jana Nayagan could be impediments in the path to negotiations.
In Kerala, BJP’s win in the Thiruvananthapuram corporation was toasted as a “big breakthrough”. But in a recent interview, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the party’s state president, conceded that the UDF and the LDF “amplified that the BJP is a communal party” and alleged that the fronts had an “implicit partnership” to thwart the BJP’s rise. Nonetheless, Chandrasekhar added that the BJP had not given up on its programme to reach out to Muslims and Christians through community clerics and influencers.
The challenges from the three states reinforce one point: fighting regional forces that draw their political sustenance from a province’s history and culture is tougher for the BJP than confronting the Congress, whose emphasis on ‘secularism’ and ‘mohabbat’ is sounding increasingly tired.
Radhika Ramaseshan | Columnist and political commentator
(Views are personal)