By all accounts, it has been the most rumbustious campaign ever witnessed in the 67-year-long political history of Madhya Pradesh. It saw the usual spectacle of a vibrant democracy getting amplified to an utterly chaotic level.
Never before has the firefighting to placate rebel candidates been so desperate, personal attacks against one another so virulent, and the competitive display of Hinduness so brazen and promises of freebies to the electorates so extravagant.
Congress’s Consistency
Regardless of whatever result the November 17 voting throws up on December 3, neither BJP nor Congress can be blamed for their respective defeat for want of trying. Both the main players in the keen contest left no stone unturned to ensure victory.
The most remarkable feature of this election has been the Congress’s consistency, be it in setting the narrative, showing unity, picking candidates, identifying issues and arraying its star campaigners including Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi in carefully chosen constituencies.
The BJP, on the other hand, looked visibly hamstrung by the strong anti-incumbency sentiments in chalking out strategies to outsmart the main opponent.
BJP’s Spirited Campaign
Nevertheless, the spirited campaign mounted by the ruling party in the last one month of the election substantially offset its initial weaknesses.
Till as late as three months ago, it looked like the Congress might win the election hands down. Enthused by its victory in Karnataka, Congress set out to emulate the success mantra that worked wonders in the southern state in Madhya Pradesh too.
The BJP, facing anti-incumbency against the 18 years of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s rule, was on the defensive. The slogan of “50 percent commission ki sarkar”, a slight modification of the Congress’s war cry in Karnataka, resonated with the people.
Speculation was rife that the BJP could contest the election in MP on the Prime Minister’s face, rather than let Shivraj Singh Chouhan be the spearhead like in the previous three assembly elections.
Centralised BJP Campaign
The BJP central leadership proved the speculations right. Unfazed by the failure of such a gambit in Karnataka, Union home minister Amit Shah took the reins of the campaign in his hands.
He deployed three of his cabinet colleagues – Bhupendra Yadav, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Narendra Singh Tomar – to supervise the entire machinery of electioneering. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh was left high and dry.
Soon enough though, the central leadership realised that the chief minister is too powerful in state politics to ignore. This realisation grew more acute when the central leadership’s experiment of fielding seven Members of Parliament including three Union ministers apart from national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya failed to charge up the party workers.
Chouhan Bounces Back
While the parachuted big guns reluctantly entered the fray and got stuck in their respective constituencies, Shivraj Singh Chouhan continued to take on the Congress with aplomb.
Not only that, through his combative and emotional campaign, the Chief Minister subtly sent out the message to the central leadership that the party will sideline him to its own peril. It helped that Chouhan, an OBC, is suited best to counter the Congress on the promise of the caste-based census in Madhya Pradesh.
Chouhan’s bounce-back in the reckoning as chief ministerial candidate may not help the party retain power, but it certainly points to the limits of the BJP’s options in the state.
Asset And Liability
Paradoxically, Chouhan is both an asset as well as the Achilles heel for his party, a situation that has proved to be a great advantage for the Congress. PCC president and chief ministerial candidate Kamal Nath has exploited this BJP’s dilemma to the hilt.
In the face of BJP’s invitation to it to play on the saffron party’s strong turf of Hindutva, the Congress has not wavered on its prime target – the alleged misgovernance of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
With all his myriad promises to a large cross section of voters, the chief minister has no convincing answer to the Congress’s relentless poser – why did you wait all these years to do what you are promising to do when the election is round the corner?
Today’s polls effectively revolve around this question. People seem eager to judge the 18 years of the BJP rule on its performance – or lack of it. The BJP sought to divert the people’s attention from its government’s report card while the Congress is steadfastly stuck to this.
From Prime Minister Narendra Modi down to local candidates, BJP leaders vigorously sought to evoke religious sentiments on the Ram temple and other emotive issues but the Congress refused to play on the opponent’s pitch. That is the biggest takeaway from this election.
Rakesh Dixit is a senior journalist based in Bhopal. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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