The results in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand had shown that local issues matter in a state election.
Will Bihar, which goes to the polls in the festive season of Dussehra in October, be able to stop what NCP supremo Sharad Pawar described as “BJP’s cycle of defeats” post the Aam Aadmi Party blitzkrieg on 11 February? Having fared poorly in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and now Delhi, after Narendra Modi’s spectacular Lok Sabha win in May 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party needs to reverse the tide and get into a winning streak prior to its assault on Mamata Banerjee’s West Bengal bastion in April-May of 2021. Elections will follow in Tamil Nadu and Assam thereafter. And in Uttar Pradesh in 2022. Each of these states has formidable regional players. The rise in BJP’s vote share in Delhi is being cited by its leadership as a positive. That notwithstanding, the fact is that despite a high voltage campaign which tended to be divisive as well as abusive, the ruling party at the Centre lost out to National Capital Territory Delhi’s incumbent regional party decisively. The Aam Aadmi Party, which began as an offshoot of the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement, has now firmly established itself as a party of governance, which sought and got a mandate based on its performance and performance alone. In the process, it ousted BJP and decimated Congress—no mean achievement for a regional party, which faced two formidable national parties as its opponents.
The campaign in Delhi has many takeaways: perhaps the most prominent is that nationalism alone cannot be a plank and that the voters are discerning and they judge parties by their performance. The results in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand had shown that local issues matter in a state election. The voters in Odisha, who voted for the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal for the Assembly in the poll, held simultaneously with the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, had opted for the BJP for Lok Sabha. The Indian voter has started showing his/her preferences clearly—while a national party with a strong leader is the option for Parliament, a vibrant regional outfit with a record of governance gets franchise for running a state government. The decline of Congress began in 1967 when it lost state elections. 1977 followed a decade later. (Congress has been out of power in Tamil Nadu the past 53 years; in West Bengal for 43 years, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for 30 years and Odisha and Gujarat for past two decades, while it remains a national party—largest opposition group in the Lok Sabha.)
In Bihar, BJP has to ensure that the National Democratic Alliance retains its allies. Maharashtra was lost post-election as the erstwhile Jan Sangh’s second-oldest ally, Shiv Sena was not comfortable with BJP. (Sangh’s oldest ally, Akali Dal, too had been uncomfortable in Punjab, but the alliance has been tensile.) Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar has expelled Pavan Verma and Prashant Kishor from his party in recent weeks following their criticism of BJP’s policies. He campaigned in Delhi for NDA, his personal friendship with Arvind Kejriwal notwithstanding. Amit Shah is on record that Nitish Kumar will be the NDA’s chief ministerial face in Bihar. Speculation persists if the RJD-Congress alliance will try to woo back JD(U). Lalu Yadav, who is interned in a Jharkhand jail, has had better access to visitors since the Hemant Soren government took charge in Ranchi. There is talk of him being enlarged on bail to enable his campaigning in the Bihar poll. Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party, another NDA ally in Bihar, is firmly with BJP, though its president Chirag Paswan has cautioned against a repeat of abusive campaign in the October election.
Sources say that as the Delhi results poured in on Tuesday, the new troika of BJP: Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and party chief Jagdish Nadda went into a huddle and a way forward was put on the anvil. YSR Congress chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy flew into New Delhi on Wednesday and met the Prime Minister. He returned two days later again and met the Home Minister. Speculation is rife that after the Budget session of Parliament finishes by end-April a new look Modi ministry may be put in place with representation to YSR Congress, JD(U), AIADMK and induction of ministers from West Bengal. Amit Shah’s criticism of abusive campaigning by those who used “goli maaro” slogans in Delhi is indicative that perhaps some motor-mouths may be shown the door. Organisational changes are due in BJP following the change of guard. The party and ministerial appointments may set the tone for elections in Bihar and the polls in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, which follow in 2021.
Many Congress leaders, including Jairam Ramesh, Milind Deora and Veerappa Moily have talked of the need for Congress to reinvent itself following a series of electoral reverses, with the party’s repeat of cipher show in Delhi where it lost deposits in 80% of seats. The need for reinvention and repositioning may be felt in BJP as well. A prominent Twitter activist, @GhoseSpot commented on Tuesday, “Congress now has neither the commanding stature of a national party nor the clout of a regional party”. His tweet received wide endorsement including a re-tweet by Sonia Gandhi’s biographer, Rashid Kidwai. BJP thus is the perhaps the only national party which has the ability to deal with regional parties. Post the AAP victory it has to re-strategise, considering that while in 2018 its governments ruled over 70% of India’s territory and now that percentage has almost halved.
Arvind Kejriwal’s success can be largely attributed to his repositioning himself since 2017, when AAP failed to make a mark in Punjab and Goa elections. He did not confront the BJP on Article 370. While opposing the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) in Parliament, he did not join the anti-CAA protests. He was an antithesis to Mamata Banerjee type of politics. He positioned himself as a Delhi leader and even in his hour of triumph he has stuck to that position. His swearing in on 16 February has not been turned into an Opposition jamboree. The show of Opposition unity on the dais in Kolkata, Bengaluru, Mumbai and more recently, Ranchi, remained mere photo ops. No meaningful anti-BJP edifice emerged. By steering clear of confronting BJP by aligning with an Opposition front, Kejriwal has perhaps kept his door open for a meaningful relationship with the Centre, perhaps taking a leaf out of Sheila Dikhsit’s book—she ran a successful Congress government in her initial years while NDA ruled the Centre. The demand for full statehood for Delhi, upfront in AAP agenda (and which was part of BJP manifesto till 2009) will need cooperation from Centre. Washington DC in the United States and the City of London in the UK are municipal areas hosting the Federal governments, in the midst of states in US and counties in the UK. The areas presently controlled by New Delhi Municipal Committee (which is a nominated body unlike the municipal corporations of Delhi) could constitute a Union Territory, while the rest of Delhi could be governed by a state government if a new dispensation is created.
Amidst the brouhaha on Delhi election results, two developments have emerged which need correction. The Supreme Court in the past week has rightly asked the political parties to stem criminalisation of politics. It has asked the parties to put on their website the reason for granting a ticket to a person with criminal record. According to a study by the Association for Democratic Reforms, 61% of the winners of 11 February had criminal records. Another finding by ADR is that 52 winners (45 of AAP and seven of BJP) in the 70-member Assembly are crorepatis. Getting elected to the Assembly seems to be a far cry for the common man—aam aadmi—despite AAP sweeping back to power.