September 08, 2024

2024 Elections: BJPs Wings Clipped

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2024-06-05 02:25:40

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

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The 2024 general and assembly elections have been a mix of pro and anti-incumbency. While in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, the voters brought back the incumbent governments, in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, they showed them the door. Chandrababu Naidu made a strong comeback in Andhra and Jagan Reddy was left licking his wounds. In Odisha, strongman Naveen Patnaik failed this time and yielded space to the BJP which will form the next government. On the national stage, Prime Minister Modi's BJP bore the brunt of anti-incumbency and just about managed to stave off defeat for its alliance. From 303 seats in 2019, the BJP slid to just 240 this time. This is nothing short of defeat for the party and Modi himself.

The stakes were high. Modi had his guarantees and the BJP sought votes by portraying the good work it had done and the successful delivery of its welfare schemes. Modi and the BJP sought to make fun of the opposition INDIA alliance by calling it "opportunistic" and the Prime Minister disgustingly said that they will even perform mujra to get votes. But it seems that in the last 20 days or so of the elections, the BJP realized that the wind was not in its favour and the talk of 400 paar was all but forgotten, although bhakts carried it on in WhatsApp groups.

The biggest shock for the BJP has come from UP. As the SP-BSP alliance failed miserably in 2019, the BJP made the mistake of taking the SP-Congress alliance lightly. But there is a huge difference. Since SP and BSP are both regional parties aiming for votes from similar castes and classes, the animosity resulted in votes not getting transferred from one to another. No such animosity existed between the Congress and the SP and the biggest example of successful vote transfer was in Varanasi where the SP did not field any candidate and supported Congress’ Ajai Rai. In the process, Rai was able to increase his vote percentage from about 17% in 2019 to over 40% this time and substantially reduced the margin of victory of Prime Minister Modi.

Now, the BJP will have to form a truly coalition government. In 2014 and 2019, it had a simple majority on its own and the government was never in danger of falling if allies deserted. This time, it will be pushed hard by ambitious, and unreliable allies, and will have to accommodate too many of them. It will have to follow the coalition dharma. It will be interesting to watch how the BJP, given to ride roughshod over the opposition, manages the allies if they raise their voice against its policies.