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The outgoing year followed anything but a predictable path for the party. However, as the year drew to its end, the BJP has stamped its authority on the country’s political map once again with remarkably improbable wins in what were seen as difficult state elections in Haryana and Maharashtra.
The BJP’s vulnerabilities and as well as strengths were in full display in the year but what stood out is its ability to adapt its message and methods to the voices from the ground, underlining the full-spectrum of its campaign machine in which various components rise and fall in importance depending on its electoral needs.
If the RSS was seen to be less than fully active during the national elections, its affiliates and sympathisers were in full force helping the campaign of the BJP during the subsequent assembly polls.
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The ruling party depended on a message of triumphalism and inevitability about its return to power in the Lok Sabha elections with a mandate bigger than the 303 seats it had won in 2019. It gave the call of “abki baar, 400 paar”.
The results were sobering. If a section of its cadres and supporters turned, a section of voters were also alarmed and were drawn to the opposition’s “Constitution in danger” call built around the BJP’s “arrogance”, giving a late boost to the disjointed INDIA bloc.
The party lost its majority but the National Democratic Alliance led by it secured a comfortable majority of 294 seats in the 543-member House.
Enthused with its better-than-expected show of 99 seats, the Congress fancied a rebound in its fortunes after a decade of setbacks, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi boasted of having “demolished” Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s image, while the opposition party celebrated him as the “true voice of the people” following his 100-day stint as the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha.
As a new year approaches, it is Modi who remains the unchallenged leader while his government has shown none of the weaknesses of a coalition dispensation. It is the opposition INDIA bloc which is showing signs of unravelling, with allies increasingly distancing themselves from the Congress.
Still, some key decisions the BJP made on its alliance proved farsighted.
The party joined hands with Telugu Desam Party, the opposition party in Andhra Pradesh, ignoring past bad blood and despite its top brass’ warm ties with Chief Minister and YSR Congress leader Jagan Mohan Reddy, and called off talks with the Odisha’s ruling Biju Janata Dal.
Both moves proved decisive, as the alliance under TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu stormed to power in Andhra Pradesh, and the BJP on its own came to power in Odisha for the first time. The two assembly elections were held alongside the Lok Sabha polls.
The two states’ contribution of 41 seats to the NDA’s Lok Sabha kitty might just have tipped the scale in favour of a third consecutive BJP-led alliance’s government at the Centre under Modi’s leadership.
The BJP’s big defeat in Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra, the country’s financial powerful and electorally second biggest state after Uttar Pradesh, and fall to five seats from the all 10 it held in Haryana triggered dire predictions of its prospects in the following assembly polls in the states, its strongholds for a decade.
As the party has generally underperformed in assembly elections, the grim forecasts carried a ring of predictability as well.
A chastened BJP, however, drew upon its vast organisational machinery and resources combined with the formidable political heft of its top brass, including Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, to set in motion a process which sought to blunt the successes of opposition’s campaign in the national elections and focussed on the micro management covering specific booths, castes and regions.
It also doubled down on welfarism by announcing a slew of measures aimed at targeted groups, the cash handout for women under the “Ladki Bahin” in Maharashtra being the most notable.
That its alliance of three parties outpolled the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi by a huge 15 per cent in an election held only five months after the Lok Sabha polls, where both rival alliances had almost an equal share despite the NDA’s big loss in terms of seats, cast a light on the imagination and adaptability of the BJP.
One unqualified defeat the BJP suffered was in Jharkhand where polls were held along with Maharashtra’s.
Chief Minister Hemant Soren-led INDIA bloc alliance, which included Congress as a junior partner, inflicted a crushing defeat on the BJP, retaining power for a second term. Its local leaders found wanting, the BJP had heavily deployed its poll in-charges, Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and the alleged infiltration of Bangladeshis was the central theme of its campaign. However, Soren’s model of welfarism and regional pride in league with his own tribal identity prevailed.