The BJP asserted its political supremacy over its opposition allies, particularly the Congress which emerged as the weakest political player in the Assembly elections and bypolls that concluded on Saturday.

While the regional parties – the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and Trinamool Congress in West Bengal – displayed a fighting spirit, the Congress seemed unable to match its national rival. Besides winning the prized Maharashtra battle, the BJP alone won 20 of the total 48 bypolls held in Assam, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Punjab, Sikkim and West Bengal. The Congress managed to win barely seven.

A comeback

But the most noteworthy fact was that the BJP entirely regained lost ground in the politically-critical Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, the two States which together send 128 MPs to the Lok Sabha and where the saffron party had suffered its worst losses in the general elections just five months back.

In UP, the BJP with its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal, won seven of the total nine Assembly bypolls held alongside the Assembly polls. In Maharashtra, the BJP has put up its best performance ever since the Lok Sabha setback wherein the party came down from 23 seats in the 2019 elections to just nine seats in the 2024 general elections. Together with its allies, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, the BJP coalition had managed to win only 17 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra in June. The Congress with its allies won 30 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra.

Rise and fall

If the Lok Sabha results were to be extrapolated in terms of Assembly segment-wise lead of parties in June, the BJP was ahead in 83 seats while the Congress was ahead in 63 seats. Till the results last came in on Saturday, the BJP was leading or had won in 133 seats in Maharashtra, which means that in less than five months since the Lok Sabha election results on June 4, the BJP managed to gain a staggering 50 Assembly segments in the State. The Congress, on the other hand, was leading or had won in 15 seats in Maharashtra – which means that the party managed to lose as many as 48 Assembly segments in the last five months.

After its successive victories in Haryana and now Maharashtra Assembly polls, the BJP has proved that its losses in the Lok Sabha were a temporary setback. The saffron party’s loss in Jharkhand is more credit to the combative spirit of JMM’s leader Hemant Soren and his feisty spouse Kalpana rather than any credit to the Congress, which has been unable to build on the momentum it had acquired in the Lok Sabha polls.

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