After the Karnataka Assembly elections, the ruling BJP’s vastly successful political strategy, which led to its expansion in previously uncharted territories, seems to be up against a challenge at least at the provincial level. This strategy has three planks: the centrality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi; deft poll management by Home Minister Amit Shah; and overt Hindu nationalism. This strategy and campaign tends to overwhelm provincial issues, local leadership and local culture in favour of a national(ist) agenda ’.
Alongside this strategy shift or perhaps because of it, the BJP as an organisation has been considerably altered from within. During the era of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, the party prided itself on its strong second and third rung of national and provincial leaders including Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, M Venkaiah Naidu, Pramod Mahajan, Narendra Modi, Vasundhara Raje, Uma Bharati, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Raman Singh and BS Yeddyurappa. Now, under the centralised command of Modi and Shah, the BJP has virtually no strong grassroots-level second rung leaders. In the States, with the exception of Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh, the wings of the regional satraps have been clipped. After the party lost Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the 2018 Assembly elections, Vasundhara Raje, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh were dragged to the Delhi unit whereas they were interested in retaining the Leader of Opposition slot in their respective States.
Arguably, the one-nation-one-leader strategy remains viable for the general elections. But it is clear after Karnataka that local issues and leadership can take precedence in a State election. The Congress fared well here because it projected a strong regional leadership in Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar while running a localised campaign focusing on the State government’s alleged corruption, backing that up with welfarist promises. The BJP paid the price for sidelining a strong regional leader like Yeddyurappa, parachuting central favourites such as BL Santhosh and Pralhad Joshi, and relying overly on the PM’s popularity and ideological issues.
In the upcoming Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Mizoram, the BJP can scarcely afford to undermine its local leaders. The signs so far are that the BJP has not fully internalised the new reality. Although Chouhan was sent back to MP in 2020 when the BJP toppled the Kamal Nath-led Congress government by engineering the defection of Jyotiraditya Scindia, he has not been able to function with any degree of autonomy. There is confusion over his leadership in the face of a claim for his job by Scindia. In Chhattisgarh, Raman Singh has lost valuable ground while the sitting CM Bhupesh Baghel seems better placed. In Rajasthan, there is still no saying whether the BJP will project Raje as the CM face, despite her popularity. Time is running out for the BJP to change tack — from the national to the provincial.