The BJP’s victory in the Haryana and Maharashtra Assembly polls is an eye-opener as well as a lesson for the party. While the saffron party has retained power in both the states, it definitely shows that there is a limit to the ideologically driven politics it practices. It also underlines the futility of turning every election into a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BJP had sought votes on nationalistic issues and not given much thought to the economic crisis that is currently prevailing in the country. It shows that elections in India continue to be very keenly contested and that everything cannot be done while looking through the national prism. At least at the local level, people are looking at and are bothered about their personal day-to-day economic concerns. This is the biggest takeaway from the results that have emerged from Haryana and Maharashtra.
The BJP needs to do some soul searching over the economic policies that it is pursuing. It cannot take things lightly any more on this front and will have to tackle the problem of the economic slowdown.
Even within the party organisation, the BJP needs to look at what I would like to call the Congressisation of the party, which has been underway since 2014. This has led the party to induct defectors from every quarter into the saffron fold. Another aspect that the party needs to internally assess is how the entire move to rope in celebrities to fight elections in Haryana has backfired in a big way.
Another major takeaway is that there is no need for a national opposition party in the country. A segregated opposition is good enough. Interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi should learn from this result and prop up regional leaders within the party, maybe even set up a presidium of state leaders. The result also is a sign that the upcoming Assembly elections in Jharkhand, Delhi and Bihar will be more challenging for the saffron party.
With regard to Maharashtra, I am not certain whether incumbent Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, if he gets a second term, would be able to complete it. I see the saffron party’s ally, the Shiv Sena, becoming more demanding. It is already eyeing the chief minister’s chair. One cannot be sure of what it is aiming for. Right now, it is demanding a 50:50 deal with the BJP in terms of a rotational chief minister. It may ask for a greater number of ministerial portfolios, including lucrative ones. I think the verdict of the people shows that the Fadnavis government was a very mediocre one.
The BJP tried to project Fadnavis as a very able administrator who was able to work out a new social coalition and ensure that Marathas were assuaged while he himself was a Brahmin. But clearly this has not worked out. I think even within the party, Fadnavis’s position would be challenged by people like state BJP chief Chandrakant Patil. The Maratha lobby within the party is likely to demand its pound of flesh.
The region-wise performance of the BJP in Maharashtra is not something to cheer about. The saffron party has not done very well in Vidarbha, especially in the Nagpur region, signalling the resurgence of either the Congress or the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The Konkan region, however, remains a bastion of the saffron fold and they have made some inroads in western Maharashtra. There are regional imbalances in Maharashtra that show Indian elections continue to be very disaggregated. Elections are not fought on a single issue and things may differ from constituency to constituency.
Similarly, in Haryana, the rise of the Dushyant Chautala-led Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) is tremendous. It shows that Jat politics has not come to an end and the BJP’s experiment of working with non-dominant communities is now going to be seriously reviewed. It might have to fall back on working with dominant communities.
In both Haryana and Maharashtra, the BJP has not been successful in returning to power with a comfortable majority by having a person of a non-dominant community at the helm of affairs. It is possible that Manohar Lal Khattar will not be rewarded with a second term as chief minister. I think there will be pressure from within the BJP and people like Captain Abhimanyu, who himself got defeated. Various other people also pose a threat to Khattar’s leadership from within the party.
Apart from the Assembly elections, the by-elections also tell a story. For example, the RJD won two seats in Bihar and the Congress came out on top in three out of the six seats that went to the polls in Gujarat. In short the BJP has not been able to repeat the performance of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The parliamentary elections were fought on a nationalistic plank. Quite clearly this did not work in the Assembly polls.
The door is open for the Congress, but not for its national leadership. It is now time for Sonia Gandhi to empower state leaders. The Congress has to bring in structural changes in the organisation and announce the formation of a presidium consisting of state leaders. The leaders also need to be much more focused and shed their diffidence about the ideological hegemony of the BJP. This election shows that one can stand against the BJP and put up a good fight, if not defeat them, without subscribing to their ideology.