With a spectacular show in Maharashtra and a sweep in almost half of the 48 bypolls held across multiple States, the BJP has firmly established its political supremacy. In just five months since the Lok Sabha elections, the ruling party has recovered lost ground while the Congress has totally failed to build on the momentum it had gained. It is now the weakest political player in the opposition spectrum.
With a blend of Hindutva and aggressive welfarism reflected in populist schemes like Ladki Bahin Yojna, the BJP has secured significant reversals in the politically-critical Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh where it had suffered its worst losses in the general elections. In UP, the BJP with its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal won seven of the total nine Assembly by-polls. In Maharashtra, it has put up its best ever performance of 132 seats, just 13 short of the majority mark in the 288-member Assembly. This is a spectacular show, coming months after the BJP was down to nine of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra which, when extrapolated over the assembly segments, would have meant a lead in just 83 Assembly seats. A 132 seat win means that the BJP has gained a staggering 49 Assembly segments since the Lok Sabha polls. The Congress, on the other hand, won just 16 seats which suggests that the party lost as many as 47 Assembly segments in which it had led during the Lok Sabha polls.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi summed up the underlying political message with characteristic flourish. “Congress is a sinking political parasite that drags its allies down,” he said. Indeed, elections in Jharkhand and bypolls in West Bengal prove that the regional players like the JMM and Trinamool Congress still pack a punch against the BJP. Recovering from the disastrous RG Kar rape and murder incident that led to a widespread people’s movement against her, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress has won all the six Assembly bypolls. In Jharkhand, Hemant Soren and his wife Kalpana addressed close to 100 rallies across the State and outdid the BJP whose aggressive campaign against “infiltrators” flopped in the tribal State. But as far as the Congress is concerned, it failed in Jharkhand with just 16 seats while JMM did all the heavy-lifting. This is almost a repeat of the Jammu and Kashmir elections in October where the Congress was the laggard with just six seats while the National Conference saved the day for the Opposition bloc.
The BJP is now firmly in the saddle with what the PM suggested is the agenda for “Vikas aur Virasat (development and cultural heritage)”. What this translates into is a push for Uniform Civil Code, One Nation One Election and Waqf Bill at one level and aggressive reforms like ushering in 100 per cent FDI in insurance at another. This ideological and reformist agenda is tempered with a heavy dose of populist welfare schemes that work for the party at the hustings. Congress will need to come up with something better than self-righteous sloganeering on crony capitalism.