A recent CVoter opinion poll and other credible data suggest that the mountain might be too steep to climb for the opposition.
A dazzling array of purported strategies to defeat the BJP in 2024 have been dangled by various opposition leaders and a whole lot of political and even economic commentators who seem convinced that a third term for Narendra Modi will spell doom for India. The “joint candidates” in 400 constituencies is the most talked about strategy. Some have argued that Rahul Gandhi needs to take Hindutva head on instead of tiptoeing around temples, since significantly more than 50% of the electorate doesn’t vote for the BJP. There are others who say the only path ahead for the I.N.D.I.A partners is to completely ignore Prime Minister Modi and focus on local issues and underperforming BJP MPs. Of course, DMK leaders are offering another novel strategy: abuse Hinduism and denigrate North Indians so ferociously and viciously that they might be jolted into voting for the opposition alliance.
But jokes and levity apart, the authors think there is only one path available for the opposition alliance given the overwhelming popularity of Narendra Modi in vast swathes of the country. And that is to somehow reduce the BJP to fewer than 260 seats or even fewer than 250 seats. Why so? Narendra Modi is different from Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In the 23 years that he has been the Chief Minister of Gujarat and Prime Minister of India, Modi has been the undisputed leader who has led from the front; aggressively and unapologetically.
Whatever his fans think and say of him, the fact remains that Narendra Modi will no longer be the towering leader he has become if the BJP has to depend on “allies” for a majority in the Lok Sabha. Sure, if the BJP crosses 250 and the Congress cannot cross 100 (almost a certainty now, given available data), it can comfortably form a government. But the allies who will come with those two dozen odd MPs will extract a very heavy price; both in terms of a genuine share at the high table and in terms of optics. How will Indians perceive him as the head of a coalition government? Indians in the past could never envisage Indira Gandhi as a coalition leader. No doubt, the BJP had a number of allies as part of NDA in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha victories. But virtually all have left and it has never looked like the BJP top brass has made any concerted efforts to woo them back.
It is comfortable with the 303 seats it won in 2019 and is focused on increasing that number in 2024. The opposition focus is exactly the opposite: to take the BJP down to well below the majority mark. In effect, the BJP has to lose between 40 to 50 seats from its 2019 tally for Modi to be diminished and defanged; a fervent hope many Indians of a certain ideological hue have nurtured with great passion for more than two decades. As the CVoter opinion poll for ABP News indicated, the BJP is projected to get a simple, reduced majority on its own. The poll also indicates that while the BJP will improve its vote share in states where it is a marginal player, that will not translate into any seats. The poll also indicates that some regional leaders like Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik remain iconically popular leaders in their own bastions. To that extent, the CVoter poll doesn’t project the BJP gaining or losing a significant number of seats in West Bengal and Odisha. Now let us look at hard numbers in some other states.
Events of 2023 have prompted many political analysts to argue that the BJP is very vulnerable in four states, namely West Bengal, Bihar, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Let’s start with Karnataka, where the party won 25 out of 28 seats in 2019 and is projected to do the same in 2024. For argument’s sake, let’s say its tally drops from 25 to 18 seats. That’s a loss of 7 seats. Now let’s come to West Bengal. There are credible reports from the ground that BJP supporters were so badly bruised and battered in the aftermath of the 2021 Assembly election results that many might simply not go to vote out of sheer fear. So, again for argument’s sake, let’s say the BJP tally drops from 18 in 2019 to 10 in 2024.
That totals a loss of 18 seats for the BJP. Now look at Maharashtra, which is a melting pot of confusion because of so many “splits” and so many disparate alliances. The CVoter poll does indicate that the BJP could be in a difficult situation in the state. Once again, for argument’s sake, let’s assume that the BJP tally drops from 23 in 2019 to 16 in 2024. We now have a combined tally drop of 25 seats. Remember: the BJP on its own had won 303 seats in 2019. So a tally drop of 25 means the BJP could be down to 278 seats. That leaves Bihar where the Left, Congress, RJD and JDU have a formidable alliance. The BJP had won 17 seats in 2019. Once again for argument’s sake, let’s say the BJP tally drops to 12 in 2024. Now the BJP has lost a combined tally of 30 seats.
But it is still winning a majority of 273 seats. In any case, the authors think the chances of the BJP dropping so many seats in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal are very slim. You might as well ask: but then what about states like Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh et al where the party swept virtually everything? The hard fact is these are direct face-offs between the BJP and the Congress and the latter has no hope; at least not for 2024. The stubborn Congress supporter might well ask: why are you leaving out Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 MPs? Facing a combined Mayawati-Akhilesh Yadav alliance, Modi won 62 seats in 2019. Does anyone really think it will win fewer than that in 2024? Or that 2024 could magically be a repeat of 2004?
What happened back then? It was two monumental blunders that became the root cause of the BJP/NDA flop show. The first was losing DMK as an ally and then succumbing to TDP pressure and calling for early elections. In both states, with about 80 seats, the NDA was wiped out, leading to UPA getting 31 more seats than NDA. In West Bengal, another NDA ally, TMC managed just one out of 42 seats. Compare 2004 with 2014 and 2019 when the BJP would have won a majority on its own without these three states. Winning 18 seats in Bengal in 2019 was the icing on the cake. In the Vajpayee era, BJP flopped when NDA allies flopped. Not any longer.
Besides, it is working to call 2004 a “Sonia Shocker” as many analysts still do. It was just a kind of Black Swan event. And if that was a Sonia Shocker, 2014 was a 220-volt jolt of Narendra Modi. For most left leaning pundits, the 2019 results were a bigger 440-volt jolt. Strangely, they continue to harbour delusions because data suggests another 880-volt jolt awaits them in 2024.
Yashwant Deshmukh is Founder & Editor in Chief of CVoter Foundation and Sutanu Guru is Executive Director.