BJP — on course for 2019

The BJP’s spectacular win in Uttar Pradesh, bagging 312 Assembly seats out of 403, has rendered its opponents reeling and speechless, or making outrageous charges such as the EVMs having been tampered with.

This stunning victory has once again reiterated the role of the unbeatable combination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah. Since 2014, Shah has further fine-tuned his micromanagement skills in designing an election campaign by the perfect juggling of the caste factor and choice of candidates. He puts in place the election map and Modi steps in with his charisma and the promise of development, providing a corruption-free government and his sab ka saath sab ka vikas mantra.

Add to this his image of being a pro-poor prime minister, which was reinforced by the politically brilliant move of demonetisation well ahead of the Assembly elections, and you have an electorate eating out of the BJP’s hands. As it did in both UP and Uttarakhand, giving the party a historic victory.

So powerful was the surge in UP that the BJP’s vote-share went up from a modest 15 per cent in 2012 to a whopping 39.7 per cent. The SP got 21.8 per cent and 47 seats (against 224 in 2012) and the BSP 22.2 per cent and 19 seats, and the Congress a shameful 6.2 per cent and 7 seats.

In Punjab, the expected happened; the Akali Dal-BJP alliance was trounced and the Congress led by Amarinder Singh scored a convincing victory by bagging 77 of the 117 seats.

And in Manipur and Goa, the party remained slightly ahead of the BJP, with both States throwing up a hung Assembly.

The BJP’s landslide victory in UP, where its 312-member contingent doesn’t have a single Muslim MLA for the simple reason the BJP did not give a single ticket to a Muslim candidate, as in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, has resulted in a shrinking space for Muslim MLAs. Their numbers have come down from 67 in the last Assembly to a paltry 25 in the present one; 19 from the SP-Congress alliance and 6 from the BSP.

But it is heartening to note that this Assembly will have the highest ever number of women — 38. The BJP having given tickets to 43 women, 32 of whom won, is a welcome factor.

As in 2014, Shah’s calculation has been bang on. UP might have an over-19 per cent Muslim population, but it also has 80 per cent Hindus. The latter is, of course, a complex caste-ridden puzzle but if, for long years, the SP could consolidate its Yadav and Muslim base, and the BSP its dalit voters, the BJP has also now cracked the caste/sub-caste code.

Happily, one myth the 2017 UP verdict has bust is that Muslims vote as a monolith. The BJP won 31 of the 42 seats where Muslims have over 40 per cent vote-share. This could be either due to consolidation of Hindu votes, or because of Muslims — I suspect women and younger, educated Muslim voters — biting the bullet and voting for the BJP. Already, BJP MP Vinay Katiyar has claimed that a section of Muslims, particularly women, voted for the BJP, won over by its “welfare policies”.

The Congress’ convincing Punjab victory and edging past the BJP in Goa have proved to be a fig leaf for it. But there is little doubt now on which way the country is headed in the 2019 General Election.

After Maharashtra’s civic polls, the UP verdict proves that Narendra Modi has caught the imagination of the Indian masses who see a saviour in him to meet their aspirations for a better life and a brighter future — good education, healthcare, sanitation, infrastructure. The massive victories in UP and Uttarakhand put a bigger responsibility on Modi — ideally it should be Team Modi, but then it is he, and only he, who is being seen as the Messiah — to deliver all that he has promised.

During the UP campaign, Amit Shah ascribed the BJP not having a single Muslim candidate to the “winnability” factor. And however much we might talk of “development”, once again, in 2019, all the parties will go back to their drawing boards and work and rework caste and communal permutations and combinations. Election slogans might evolve around the promise of good governance, but in the strategy room, it is the divide and rule or the winning formula that matters; you may call it polarisation at worst or social engineering to make it more palatable.

But what gives hope is Modi’s statement on bahumat and sarvamat. In his victory speech he said that before the elections it was about bahumat , or majority, to win. But once the results come, the Government has to work for sarvamat or everybody. Inclusive growth cutting across caste, class and community is the mantra. If the Prime Minister can walk the talk, we know who the winner will be in 2019.