Assembly polls will be agnipariksha for Modi-Amit Shah partnership

Assembly polls will be agnipariksha for Modi-Amit Shah partnership

The BJP will soon be coming up against a fundamental Indian reality: one election is not quite like another. The Lok Sabha elections are over; it is the states that are the challenge.

The political strength of Narendra Modi and his confidant and party chief Amit Shah will be fully tested in the August-December period, when five states go to the polls and Bihar holds by-elections to 10 assembly seats. If they cross this hurdle successfully, the BJP will feel more confident about making big moves on the national stage. If they don't, their stewardship of government and party will be more uncertain.

Both Modi and Shah face the crisis of excessive expectations. The former on delivery of "achche din" and the latter on electoral success. While any slipping or tripping will dent their image. The results that brought the BJP to power with its own parliamentary majority on 16 May are now a distant memory. Those very results have, in fact, prompted a huge rethink in the opposition — especially after the drubbing the latter received in the Hindi heartland.

The Modi wave that brought down the UPA has now forced the others to band together to and produce a wave breaker. We saw the first impact of that in Uttarakhand, where the Congress won all three by-elections to the assembly after receiving a 5-0 whitewash in the Lok Sabha polls. The Congress is fighting back hard wherever it has a chance. Coming up next is Bihar, where the BJP-LJP-Rashtriya Lok Samata Party alliance took all but nine of the state’s 40 seats in May.

This has forced a formidable alliance between the Janata Dal (United) of Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad’s RJD and the Congress. This alliance will face its first test next month, when 10 assembly by-elections are due to be held. Six BJP seats are at stake, and if the party wins less than six, it will be seen as an erosion of its Lok Sabha support base.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has learnt its lesson from its abject failure in Delhi and other states — the lone success being in Punjab. Arvind Kejriwal has watered down the party’s national ambitions by deciding — correctly — to focus all his efforts on Delhi. Haryana and Maharashtra will not be given any importance in Kejriwal’s immediate scheme of things. In Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the BJP as yet does not seem to face any formidable opposition – but one cannot count the chickens before they hatch.

In Maharashtra, the BJP has wisely abandoned the idea of picking a fight with the Shiv Sena on the assumption that the Modi wave will get it more seats. It may have a claim to more seats from the Sena, but trying to pretend that it can pull it off on its own is foolhardly. Without Gopinath Munde, who was killed in a road accident in June, the party has no leader who can pull off any miracle.

In Haryana, the party is dilly-dallying on its alliance with the Haryana Janhit Congress which failed to win any seat in the Lok Sabha polls, whereas the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), despite having its leaders in jail, won two at a canter. The BJP may thus be eyeing an alliance with this party and dumping its older ally.

It is clear that if the BJP has to pull off victories in all or most of these states, it will need to use the charisma of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah’s organisational skills to the full. This serious electoral challenge is obviously cramping the Modi style, with the government making only cautious moves in all areas. This is probably why the budget was less radical that one would have expected from a Modi government.

Modi himself has remained silent most of the last two months, focusing instead on getting a firm grip on administration. His first major speech will be on 15 August, where he is expected to read out the NDA’s 70-day report card and announce new initiatives that are voter-friendly.

Amit Shah, who unexpectedly won 71 seats for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh – a feat that enabled him to stake a claim to the BJP’s top party job – will find that reputations built in a day can also be demolished in a day. He has his work cut out in Delhi and the immediate by-elections in Bihar.

The BJP has made a few mistakes after 16 May – the most important one being the delay in holding the Delhi assembly elections. If the party had announced an immediate holding of elections to the capital, it could have built on the momentum it gained during the Lok Sabha polls. Now the issues will be completely different since it is seen to run Delhi through the Lt Governor – and the power failure in a torrid summer was seen as a black mark against the party. The BJP faces a determined Kejriwal.

The second mistake was to assume that state elections in Uttarakhand will be a walkover. Instead, it got walked over. Clearly, the party needs a strategy for states that is different from what it deployed in the Lok Sabha polls, where Modi was the only issue. The BJP steamrollered the opposition in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh because of the combined impact of strong local leaders and the Modi wave. During the forthcoming state elections, the BJP will face a more united opposition.

In Haryana, Delhi and Jharkhand, the BJP has no announced leader. This many need quick rectification. Last December, the BJP had Harsh Vardhan leading the party in Delhi. He is now a central health minister, and it is doubtful if the party will sacrifice a Lok Sabha seat to let him lead the party in the assembly elections.

In Maharashtra, the death of Munde may actually have ended the conflict with the Sena, as Uddhav Thackeray now emerges as a clear leader of the alliance. However, here too one can expect strong opposition: the Congress and NCP are fighting for their lives, and they will surely seal an alliance in the end despite initial bickering. One cannot also rule out some accommodation with Raj Thackeray’s MNS, who is fighting for his political future.

In Haryana, the BJP has to project a leader and decide between Janhit Congress and INLD. The chances are the BJP will go with the latter if it is willing to play a junior role. In Jharkhand, where former NDA finance minister Yashwant Sinha is making a big pitch for a local role, the party’s last Chief Minister, Arjun Munda, will be a formidable opponent. Local factors and a Lalu-Congress-JD(U)-Jharkhand Mukti Morcha grand alliance will ensure that the BJP has a fight on its hands. The BJP’s best bet may be to project Sinha as the new face of the party, as Munda did not cover himself with glory in his last stint as CM.

In Jammu & Kashmir, it is not an alliance, but the break-up of the national Conference-Congress alliance that will challenge the BJP. The BJP cashed in on the anti-incumbency of this alliance, and decimated the Congress in the non-Muslim areas. This time, the Congress will make a determined bid for the Hindu vote in Jammu - and the BJP will have to hold on to its gains of May.

Modi and Shah will find that compared to May 2014, October-December will pose the bigger challenge as the issues are different, and the opposition is waking up. If they win these polls, one can expect bolder moves after December.

source:firstpost

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