With Gujarat polls around the corner, Modi's countdown to 2019 Lok Sabha elections begins
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s coast-to-coast outreach in the United States has raised the party’s hopes: can Rahul do the impossible and revive the comatose Congress? We’ll soon know.
Beginning November 2017, the next 18 months are packed with eleven elections: Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh later this year, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Chhattisgarh in 2018, and the big one, the Lok Sabha poll, in April-May 2019.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, each of these elections calls for a different strategy. Gujarat is first off the blocks. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had decided not to contest in Gujarat after humiliating defeats in Goa, Punjab and the MCD. But buoyed by the Bawana bypoll win in Delhi, it is scrambling to again play spoiler in Gujarat.
That will upset the Congress’ Ahmed Patel more than Amit Shah. If AAP contests, it will cannibalise Congress, not BJP, votes – as it did in Goa.
Despite over 20 years of potential anti-incumbency, Gujarat is likely to vote decisively for the BJP for three reasons.
First, it’s the state’s first Assembly election since Narendra Modi became prime minster. His appeal to Gujarati pride remains strong. Second, Hardik Patel’s Patidar agitation has fizzled out amidst factional fights and Patel’s own problems with a multitude of criminal cases.
Third, the Congress is in disarray. Ahmed Patel’s knife-edge victory in the Rajya Sabha poll last month showed how former Congress leader Shankersinh Vaghela’s rebel MLAs could hurt the Congress in the Assembly election.
The 2012 Gujarat Assembly poll propelled Modi to the national stage. In the 2002 poll, he had won on polarisation following the Godhra riots; in 2007, he won on development; in 2012, he won on a rapidly expanding national profile.
In the 2017 election, no longer chief minister, Modi is determined to orchestrate a BJP sweep in Gujarat. Of the state’s 182 seats, the BJP won 117 in 2012 with 64.28 per cent vote share. That figure could rise in 2017.
The Gujarat Assembly election is also likely to be the first major poll fought after Rahul Gandhi’s appointment as president of the Congress, widely expected in October. It will be a trial by fire for Rahul in a state where in 2012 the Congress won just 32.42 per cent vote share and 59 seats.
After Gujarat, attention will turn to the hill state of Himachal Pradesh in December 2017. With chief minister Virbhadra Singh embroiled in corruption cases, the BJP is likely to wrench power back in what will be a straight Congress-BJP contest.
The next large state that will test the BJP and the Congress in April 2018 is Karnataka. The state units of both the BJP and the Congress are riven by factionalism. The Congress is desperate to cling on to Karnataka, the only major state, apart from Punjab, where it is currently in power.
The JD(S) could be the joker in the pack. If it forms an alliance with the Congress, the BJP will find it difficult to unseat chief minister Siddaramaiah despite the fact that law and order have deteriorated in Karnataka under his watch.
The murder of the scholar MM Kalburgi remains unsolved after over two years. The probe into the assassination of journalist Gauri Lankesh has made little progress except to link the similarity in the weapon used in both Gauri’s and Kalburgi’s murders.
Bengaluru, once one of India’s prettiest and greenest cities, is today polluted and congested. Yet the BJP has much work to do if it wants to return to power in Karnataka. In 2013, the Congress won 36.6 per cent vote share (and 122 of the Assembly’s 223 seats). The BJP won 19.9 per cent (40 seats) and the JD(S) 20.2 per cent (also 40 seats). Factionalism within the BJP could help the Congress retain the state in what could come down to a caste-led contest between Siddaramaiah (a Kuruba Gowda) and BS Yeddyurappa (a Lingayat).
Four Northeastern states – Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland and Mizoram – also go to the polls in 2018. With the BJP ascendant in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, Amit Shah is devoting time and resources to make further inroads into the Northeast.
The most crucial test, however, awaits the BJP in November 2018 when Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh elect new state assemblies. All three face strong anti-incumbency. All three are Congress-BJP binary contests. And two of the three have credible state-level Congress leaders: Sachin Pilot (Rajasthan) and Jyotiraditya Scindia (Madhya Pradesh).
Winning these three states is key for the BJP because together they send 65 MPs to the Lok Sabha. With the Lok Sabha election looming in April 2019, the outcome in these three states could be decisive. Along with Uttar Pradesh (80 Lok Sabha seats), Bihar (40) and Maharashtra (48), these 65 seats add up to 233 seats in just six states and will shape the 2019 Lok Sabha.
The electoral math of the 2019 general election will also depend on the performance and fidelity of three big BJP allies in the NDA – JD(U), TDP and Shiv Sena – and one likely future ally, AIADMK. But for the moment it is Modi’s home state of Gujarat that all eyes are focused on.
When Rahul returns from his US tour later this week, it is to Gujarat he will first turn. A win here for the Congress is all but ruled out. Avoiding a landslide defeat though is essential to boost party morale as it prepares for a packed electoral calendar in 2018.
The Congress leadership perceives growing middle-class disenchantment with the Modi government’s economic and tax policies. It is a vulnerability the Congress will seek to exploit in the slew of eleven elections that lie ahead.
The BJP would be unwise to underestimate the Congress-led Opposition, however dysfunctional it may seem today. Elections are won on a combination of arithmetic and chemistry. The BJP has the former but needs to reignite the latter.
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