Assembly Elections 2023: BJP reaffirms hold over Hindi heartland, Telangana gives Congress its consolation prize

Assembly Election Results 2023: The BJP continues to lord as the country’s preeminent force. (PTI Photo)

The BJP re-established its hegemonic hold over the Hindi heartland, its biggest and safest insurance against the unanticipated vagaries of the parliamentary polls, winning three of the four states where the votes polled in the assembly elections were counted today. The BJP was comfortably past the half-way mark in Madhya Pradesh and looked like making it in Rajasthan. Chhattisgarh dealt the biggest shock by possibly denying the welfare-heavy incumbent Congress government a second term and facilitating a wrench by the BJP, challenging  the projections of some pollsters and analysts. Telangana offered the only consolation to the Congress which seemed set to displace the reigning BRS dispensation led by K Chandrashekar Rao and his family.

Congress Diminished

But was a win in the southern state a source of solace? The Congress only defeated a regional force but on a larger canvas its claim to being the BJP’s sole pan-Indian adversary came apart after the rout in MP, Rajasthan and potentially Chhattisgarh.

The reversals have serious implications for the future of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc, formed and positioned to confront the BJP in the 2024 battle because the Congress’s standing and capability to lead the coalition stands vastly diminished and opens up more space to the state parties.

However, the non-Congress, non-BJP parties have a history of ultimately siding with the winner even if they stand committed to “secularism”—a convenient shibboleth in the prelude to the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP continues to lord as the country’s preeminent force.

BJP’s Stranglehold Over MP 

The verdicts in MP and Chhattisgarh are particularly significant, each for its own reasons. The BJP was first elected to power in MP in 2003. After a stormy start under the leadership of the maverick but charismatic Uma Bharti, the government settled down under the stewardship of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, known by the moniker, “Mamaji” for his avuncular manner.

But for an interregnum in 2018, when the Congress wrenched power from the BJP but forfeited its government in early 2020 after a split in the legislature party, the BJP ruled MP uninterruptedly. Like in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, several factors worked to consolidate the BJP’s hold.

MP is one of the RSS’s original work stations, focussed as it was on the Adivasi belts. A robust organisation, fortified by the structures the BJP set up at the grassroots, formed the base of its success but an organisation without a political agenda is a half-finished job.

The BJP used its long spell in power to evolve a social coalition of the backward castes and the upper castes at the core of the pyramid with the addition of the Dalits and Adivasis. It used the template of welfare measures, consisting largely of targeted doles, with a strong underlay of Hindutva in a state that was always susceptible to religious polarisation although Muslims are not as large in number as in UP and Bihar.

The cherry on the icing was Chouhan who, despite the rough patches he went through in recent times, survived and led the elections from the front. He was not declared again as the CM face despite which, he sold his gender-specific schemes, notably the recent “Ladli Behna”, as the star of his governance. Women apparently voted for the BJP in huge numbers.

Myths About CM Faces

In Chhattisgarh, from a low-key, almost invisible start, the BJP is inching its way to the top by defying the Congress’s claims of “good” governance with ladlefuls of welfare schemes, a “popular” leader in Bhupesh Baghel and a backward-caste dominated social axis.

The BJP focussed on the Adivasi belts where the play on “corruption” and “communalism” apparently worked. As in MP, the BJP did not declare a CM face in Chhattisgarh but the results called into question the conventional belief that fronting an individual is necessarily a game-changer. The BJP swept Rajasthan without naming a leader and by projecting multiple faces representing the different pieces of the state’s caste mosaic tiles.

The absence of a CM face clearly did not cause intra-party friction in any of the states because the personality and leadership of PM Narendra Modi were a good enough glue to bind the party organisations and keep the cadre on their toes. Added to that attribute were the organisational skills and realpolitik understanding of Amit Shah.

However, the Congress’s only success in Telangana is a lesson for the BJP in that it reiterated its limitations in the south where it will double down its efforts and hope for a breakthrough. It was a cautionary tale for the Congress in that it made space for a new face in Revanth Reddy instead of leaning in on the old guard as in MP and Rajasthan.

The outcomes weakened the Congress’s position in INDIA where it possibly cannot call the shots as it hoped to. This is probably good news for the regional entities.