Every possible postmortem of the verdict of the five recently concluded Assembly elections has been done by all possible pathologists, ranging from seasoned pundits to opinionated social media warriors. Even the surprise choice of the chief ministers in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have led to paroxysms of frenzied analysis of the real intent and strategy of the BJP.
Most have concluded—including the authors—that barring some dramatic change in the next four months, the BJP is in clear pole position for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. A diverse range of reasons have been offered, the majority focusing rightly on the weakness of the Congress in direct face-offs with the BJP in central, north and western India.
But there is another elephant in the room that seems to be going unnoticed by analysts. That is the loud, clear and jarring message for regional parties from the verdict in Telangana.
The message is simple: You will surely live to fight another day if you focus hard on your own states and their voters. Going “national” and “international” between now and April 2024 could mean catastrophe in your own home turf. This is not fancy stuff.
Both contemporary and historic data supports this hypothesis that the first priority for regional parties is to protect their home turfs and win enough Lok Sabha seats in them.
If that means almost certain loss for I.N.D.I.A in 2024, so be it.
Look at contemporary data. In the 2018 Assembly elections, the TRS led by K.C. Rao won a massive second mandate with almost 47% of the vote share and 88 seats in an Assembly of 119. The once mighty Congress was reduced to about 28.5% of the vote share and 19 seats.
That was the time Rao needed to remember and reflect what happened to another towering Andhra politician, N.T. Rama Rao. He won a huge mandate again in 1984 soon after being unfairly dismissed by Indira Gandhi and inexplicably grew “national” ambitions. Rao focused more on the opposition alliance against the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress for the 1989 Lok Sabha elections than his home turf Andhra.
The result: NTR lost both the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in his “stronghold” Andhra; and quite badly at that. KCR forgot this lesson from history and has paid the price. After 2018, he dreamt “national” and even changed his party name to Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
He “acquired” political leaders in states like Maharashtra and Odisha and kept meeting opposition leaders to resurrect the “Third Front”. The voters in Telangana were not impressed. Given an opportunity, they showed him the door. Mamata Banerjee must have taken some lessons. Post the record shattering Assembly election victory in 2021, the TMC too suddenly nursed “national” ambitions.
The forays into the Northeast could at least be justified in some way or other. But the time, money and energy spent to fight Assembly elections in Tripura and Goa in 2022 was incredibly strange.
Having bitten the dust, TMC and Mamata Didi are back to focusing exclusively on West Bengal. The reason is common sense and simple. The regional chieftains will be hurt if they lose more Lok Sabha seats than they wanted. But they will live to fight another day. For them, losing Assembly elections could trigger an existential crisis.
Nobody has understood this better than Naveen Patnaik in Odisha. He is so completely focused on his own home turf that he literally doesn’t seem to care a damn what happens elsewhere in the political arena. The results have been a resounding thumbs up for.his strategy: five consecutive Assembly election victories with a sixth consecutive one looking like a done deal in 2024.
So what if the BJP picked up 8 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and might pick up 10 in 2024? It’s a similar story in West Bengal. The BJP surprised everyone by winning 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.
But Mamata retained Bengal in 2021. Just imagine what her situation would have been if the BJP had performed a miracle and won Bengal in 2021?
So she will fight the BJP every inch of the way in 2024; but the 2026 Assembly elections will be more important for her and her party TMC. For that matter, look at what is happening to Akhilesh Yadav and SP in Uttar Pradesh. He lost the 2017 Assembly elections badly due to poor governance, anti-incumbency and poor alliance strategy.
But for the 2022 Assembly elections, he crafted well thought alliances and performed exceedingly well compared to 2017. His alliance increased its vote share by an impressive 10%. Yet, that was 9% less than a dominant BJP, which swept the state yet again.
What does Akhilesh do in 2024 and more important, what can he do to remain relevant after 2027?
Regional leaders must have realised by now that protecting their home turf is number one priority, more during Assembly elections as they decide who rules the state. To that extent, offering a generous number of seats to the Congress for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections might send a wrong signal to their core voters. That is contemporary reality. Even historical data suggests that it could be foolhardy to offer a generous number of seats to the Congress.
Three glaring examples from the last few elections tellingly explain why. Take the most recent of the three. Nitish Kumar was not a very popular leader by the time the 2020 Assembly elections became due. In contrast, it was clear that Tejashwi Yadav had successfully taken over both the mantle and the halo of his father as a Yadav-Muslim icon. The NDA scraped through with 125 seats while the MGB won 110 in a house of 243.
Most ascribe the narrow win to Chirag Paswan and his party LJP sabotaging the Nitish led JD(U). But Tejashwi Yadav realised the real cause after detailed Election Commission data came out. His RJD contested 144 seats and won 75. The CPI(ML) contested 19 seats and won 12. The other MGB partner Congress had screamed loudly enough for Tejashwi to give it 70 seats to contest. The Congress won a pathetic 19 out of those.
Just imagine: if the defunct Congress had not been given so many seats to contest in Bihar, Tejashwi Yadav could have been Chief Minister without any help from Nitish Kumar. M.K. Stalin of DMK had made the same mistake in the 2016 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.
In that election, the Jayalalithaled AIADMK alliance had gathered a lead of less than 1% in vote share over the DMK-led alliance and won a repeat mandate against all odds. A key reason: the Congress was “generously” given 41 seats to contest. It won just 8 of them. Stalin did not repeat the mistake in 2021.
Even in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, Akhilesh Yadav took a suicidal decision and gave the Congress about 100 seats to contest, out of which the Rahul Gandhiled party won just 7. Akhilesh was losing that election anyway. But he made things worse for himself by hoping the Congress would be a strong ally. Regional leaders of I.N.D.I.A are well aware of all this. What then does this say about 2024 and beyond?
Yashwant Deshmukh is Founder & Editor in Chief of CVoter Foundation and Sutanu Guru is Executive Director.