Real challenges for BJP and Congress parties to win over all sections.
NEW DELHI: The semi-final is over in Karnataka election. I have not seen such extensive aggressive campaigns of the BJP and Congress in the last 50 years. The Congress victory will give new hope for the party in other states and for Lok Sabha. It also give boost the image of Rahul Gandhi who did the “Bharat Jodo Yatra” to connect with the people. BJP is keeping its vote share almost intact compared to the 2018 Assembly elections. It added 15% vote share over that when Lok Sabha elections happened a year later. Therefore both parties have some lessons and needs more ground work for future.
After Karnataka, the Congress also wants to bounce back after the recent losses in the North-Eastern states and give it the momentum of sorts to take on the battle-ready election machinery of the BJP, later this year in the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. In Karnataka, Congress by-and-large focused on local issues and its campaign also was run by its state leaders initially. However, its central leaders such as Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra pitched in subsequently. This poll was also a prestige battle in a way for the grand old party with a Kannadiga Mallikarjun Kharge, who hails from Kalaburagi district, at its helm, as the national president. The Congress that entered the campaign with the challenge of keeping at bay factionalism, especially between the camps of its two Chief Ministerial aspirants—Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar—who were often seen to be engaging in political one-upmanship, somehow managed to put a united front and ensured that no rift came out in open and derail its prospects. Though the campaign initially centred around its state leaders like Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar, Kharge gave it momentum and thereby prepared the pitch for the party’s top leaders Rahul, Priyanka and finally Sonia Gandhi to join in. The brother-sister duo extensively travelled across the state, challenging the BJP’s campaign machinery led by Modi, countering and challenging him on various issues, most importantly on the issue of corruption, while promising to provide a better alternative for Karnataka. Their mother and former AICC president Sonia Gandhi addressed a party rally in Hubballi on Saturday. The Congress’ main issues to attack the BJP government in this election were over corruption/ scams and the charge of 40% commission, coupled with the Adani issue.
While extensively highlighting its five key polls “guarantees”, the party tried to inform the people about its charge against the BJP government of having “failed in fulfilling 90% of its promises” made in its 2018 manifesto. At a time when it seemed like all was going well, the Congress itself waded into controversies with Siddaramaiah’s statement that “there’s already a Lingayat CM who is the most corrupt,” which the BJP turned into an “insult” to the entire Lingayat community. Mallikarjun Kharge’s “venomous snake” barb at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then his son and Chittapur MLA Priyank Kharge’s “nalayak beta” (incompetent son) remark against him, created a flutter in political circles, eliciting sharp reactions from the BJP. Amid these back-to-back controversies, the Congress manifesto proposing to ban the Bajrang Dal caused some anxiety as it threatened to hurt the optics, as BJP and PM Modi aggressively picked up the issue to portray the grand old party as being against Lord Hanuman and the sentiments of Hindus.
Now all eyes are on whether and how Opposition parties will be able to put up a united fight against the ruling BJP. BJP has quite apparently benefited from divisions in the Opposition camp in a series of elections since 2014. It is very clear writing on the wall that unless the national Opposition unites against the BJP, it will lose the 2024 Lok Sabha poll, handing Prime Minister Narendra Modi a third successive term.
Gandhi family loyalists insist and openly project Rahul Gandhi as the most eligible candidate for the post of future Prime Minister. They also expect a major share of seats for the next Lok Sabha election. Will the Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee or Samajwadi Party of Akhilesh Yadav or RJD & JD (U) of Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar accept such demand from Congress? Nitish Kumar took the lead to unite opposition parties, but a senior leader and longest-served Chief Minister of Odisha Naveen Patnaik openly rejected any alliance with other parties in the next Lok Sabha election. In the same way, it will be very difficult to convince Mamata Banerjee to share major seats with the Congress party in West Bengal. The Opposition parties are making efforts to stop Modi’s return to power, as they have unsuccessfully done in the past. There is no doubt that Modi is far ahead of any leader in terms of popularity. So much so that no one seems to be getting around him, at least in 2024. “Face Modi” has emerged stronger on the test of credibility. After the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and the beginning of the construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, the BJP, under the leadership of Modi, has only grown stronger. On the one hand, the BJP has a charismatic face like Narendra Modi, on the other hand, the Opposition’s biggest weakness is the lack of “face” and leadership. Significantly, the biggest weakness of the Opposition is the biggest strength of the BJP.
The BJP has continuously communicated with them, got them party membership and thus expanded the party’s reach to every section of society, working at the micro level. Contrary to this, other parties do not see any such continuous activity of organizational expansion. According to one estimate, the biggest success for the BJP at the organizational level in the past nine years has been how it has been able to connect the voters directly with the party. The BJP currently has around 17 crore members. With coordination between the organisation and the government, the BJP has strengthened its ground in the past nine years, a model that no party has been able to implement so far. Prime Minister Modi created a new electorate through schemes for welfare of the poor. Through schemes such as Jan Dhan, Ujjwala, Saubhagya, Awas Yojana, Swachh Bharat, Ayushman and Kisan Samman Nidhi, Modi has strengthened his credibility amid the economically marginalised and vulnerable sections of the country. In 2014, Modi got around 17,16,57,000 votes. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it increased by about 5 crore votes.
The increase was attributed to beneficiary voters or those whose lives improved because of the policies of the Modi government. Now, through schemes such as free ration, free Covid vaccine and Har Ghar Nal Se Jal, Narendra Modi has been able to reach a larger beneficiary group than in 2019. About 80 crore people are beneficiaries of free ration. The impact of this widening reach was seen in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. Due to a strong and motivated organizational base, reaching out to beneficiaries is part of the BJP’s routine work. One of the highlights of Modi’s nine-year rule has been that there has been no taint on him or his government. This will be a major reason for the BJP’s return to the Centre in the upcoming elections, because, in 2014, Modi came to power raising the issue of corruption and irregularities in governance. Even today, Modi is seen to speak and act against corruption with consistency.
Rahul Gandhi may have been raising the issue of Adani, but people do not seem to be believing any of it. Earlier in 2018, Gandhi had raised the Rafale issue in a similar way, but it failed to hold water before the public. BJP is confident that the “development agenda” of PM Modi, along with his “popularity”, will outmanoeuvre the Opposition’s efforts to stop it from returning to power. The BJP would like to build a “rainbow” coalition of different castes and communities buttressed by the appeal of nationalism and Hindutva.
The writer is editorial director of ITV Network—India News and Dainik Aaj Samaj.