Editor’s pick of the Day-- Election results in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh

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What would it be like to be a fly on the wall of a political party's headquarters just after a major election win or loss?

Is the mood, to use a musical reference, akin to a proclamation of , "We are the champions!" Or a  plaintive "The show must go on!" What we do know is that no event in pop culture or even the most immersive of cinematic or musical pieces can match the drama, the suspense and the emotional intensity of the Indian elections.

On this podcast with me Rakesh, we will decode the Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh election saga which has all the makings of a blockbuster film

Rajasthan

By 2 pm on December 11, 2018, Mirror Now's Faye D'Souza was pulling up Congress workers in Delhi for bursting crackers over a possible victory in the assembly elections Rajasthan.  As fortunes oscillated across five states and a clearer picture began to emerge in Rajasthan, young turk Sachin Pilot , freshly having won his Tonk seat began talking about Congress coming into power and about  being "in touch with like-minded parties"  while old war horse Ashok Gehlot swayed his head at the impatience of  youth and said it was all too premature to talk about though "only" Congress would form a government in the state.

Two things were certain though. One that Rajasthan had stuck to its pattern of not reelecting an incumbent government. And that the Congress high-command after having given tickets to two aspirants for the Chief-mInisterial seat would have its task cut out post a victory. Will experience win over youth, is a question only Rahul Gandhi can answer and he will once the final numbers are in and the din has quietened down.

Big players win but the voters are in the driving seat

Well, as was expected, Vasundhara Raje, Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot have won from their respective seats of Jhalrapatan, Tonk and Sardarpura. It is however the overall picture that needs a closer analysis. At the time of writing this podcast, Congress was leading in 103 seats and had touched the majority mark but just about in the 199-seat strong assembly. That makes them safe enough to lead the state but not impervious enough to be complacent.

Big players win but the voters are in the driving seat

Well, as was expected, Vasundhara Raje, Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot have won from their respective seats of Jhalrapatan, Tonk and Sardarpura. It is however the overall picture that needs a closer analysis. At the time of writing this podcast, Congress was leading in 103 seats and had touched the majority mark but just about in the 199-seat strong assembly. That makes them safe enough to lead the state but not impervious enough to be complacent.

It is also easy to see that regardless of the big names in the fray, it is the voter who has flexed a muscle or two to remind both parties that they can never take power for granted.

The mandate may be read as a vote against the rising unemployment figures and the neglect of grassroot realities faced by small time traders, farmers and ordinary citizens but it will do Congress no favours at all if it does not make the optimum use of this opportunity to work for the people. An undignified squabble between chief-ministerial hopefuls will be uncalled for at this point because in the end, elections are not about one party or another. They are about the people who vote and who must be served what they voted for. Of Rajasthan’s 4.74 crore electorate, 74.21 percent turned up to vote on December 7.Proving that the only game changer in politics is the voter on a mission to shake things up.

Behind the scenes

In a previous podcast, we had surveyed the factors that went into making this particular election in Rajasthan so complicated.  There was anger in the air against the ruling party, the lack of jobs, CM Vasundhara Raje's disconnect with citizens but then a number of defections to the Congress also made things worse for BJP. Notable among the defections was that of Manvendra Singh, the son of former union minister and senior BJP leader, Jaswant Singh. He lost to Vasundhara Raje but his departure was a moral blow to a party already struggling with a loss of credibility in national politics. Manvendra had famously left BJP with a quip and we quote, “Kamal ki phool, hamaari bhool."

Congress has been dealing with its own demons. The first being the problem of choosing between Gehlot and Pilot at the risk of isolating their voter bases.

A Congress legislative party meeting tomorrow morning in Jaipur may clarify this issue.

One thing is to be noted though, the numbers of women voters may have increased but the number of women candidates was still woefully low in Rajasthan.

Varied perspectives

Election post-mortems are inevitable and especially interesting when they come from the losing side. ANI quoted BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Kakade and he stated the reasons that according to him have caused the BJP's electoral losses.

He said and we quote, “I knew we would lose in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh but MP trends have come as a surprise. I think we forgot the issue of development that Modi took up in 2014. Ram Mandir, statues and name changing became the focus.”

Hindustan Times cited BJP ally Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut and we quote, “I won’t say these are victories of Congress, but this is an anger of the people. Self-reflection is needed.”

Congress leaders have already started attributing the win to the hard work of the party’s trench workers and the overall clarity of the roadmap. Considering that Congress just won 21 seats last time, this is a trust mandate that the party cannot take lightly.

Sachin Pilot has been a strident voice against the ruling party and has stated and we quote, “The mandate is against the BJP as they were arrogant. There is an atmosphere of fear in the country. BJP is muzzling voices. This is not the kind of democracy we want.”

Senior BJP leader and Home Minister Rajnath Singh, however, refuses to concede that the poll results are in any way indicative of a rising wave against the BJP and has stated that the polls were fought on the basis of the performance of state governments, and were not a reflection upon the Modi government, according to PTI.

Ashok Gehlot though had this to say and we quote, “This is a clear indication of things to come in 2019. The BJP had made tall promises, but could not fulfill them. The achhe din they spoke about never came. They (BJP) haven't taken consideration of the opposition. They haven't taken partners along. The Congress, on the other hand, has done much better on that front.”

Even observers from other states have had interesting things to say. West Bengal Chief-Minister Mamata Banerjee said and we quote, "This is the people’s verdict and victory of the people of this country. The victory of democracy and victory against injustice, atrocities, destruction of institutions, misuse of agencies, no work for poor people, farmers, youth, Dalits, SC, ST, OBC, minorities and general caste.”

At the Congress HQ in Jaipur, a giant clock was seen counting down to the "end of Vasundhara Raje government” but politics is a revolving door and the voter decides who will stay and who will leave and it would bode well for both parties to remember that.

Chhattisgarh

Dramatic exit

Most blockbusters begin with a dramatic entry. Well, this one begins with a dramatic exit.  The exit of a long-running warhorse. At the time we were putting this piece together, headlines were dramatically screaming, "Congress Set To End Raman Singh's Record Run In Chhattisgarh."

BJP's Raman Singh. The man at the heart of this story. He was after all the longest-serving chief minister of the BJP and in 2013, he had won from the Rajnandgaon seat by 36,000 votes.

This time, he was battling for the same seat in a close contest against Congress's Karuna Shukla, incidentally the niece of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Bajpayee. The three-term Chief Minister was even briefly trailing in his constituency, but is now leading.

Why did BJP lose this state after remaining unchallenged for 15 years? What or who did the voters vote for or against?

Did they vote for change? The analysis will take time but the mandate is decisively against the winning run that clocked three years more than Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tenure as Gujarat chief minister and two years more than Shivraj Singh Chouhan tenure in Madhya Pradesh.

One thing that failed to bolster BJP's chances or dent Congress's gains was the strategic alliance between Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and former chief minister Ajit Jogi's Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (J) even though the "gathbandhan" was expected to divide the votes for Congress.

Exit polls had also been divided between predicting a close contest between the two major parties and in some cases, a tentative win for Congress. It was however going to be an uphill task considering Congress was hoping to return to power after 15 years of voter rejection.

Shrinking margins and a landslide

Still, the margins between winners and losers were not massive even in the 2013 elections when the BJP won 49 seats, and Congress 39.

A land-slide victory for Congress, however, was something that few expected but as election pundits are now screaming from their respective rooftops, this is where we are now.

At the time of writing this, Congress was leading the BJP by 68 to 12 seats as counting went on to tally votes that were cast on November 12 and November 20.

As NDTV recalled, "The first phase, where 18 constituencies went to vote, saw a voter turnout of 76.35 percent. The second phase, where the remaining 72 constituencies went to vote, saw a voter turnout of 76.34 percent. There was an average overall turnout of 76.35 percent in the state."

If Home-Minister Rajnath Singh is to be believed, the elections results in states that BJP is on the verge of losing can be attributed to the track records of state governments and cannot be taken as reflective of any kind of supposed wave of rising anger against the party's national policies. But this was Chhattisgarh, the poster child of BJP's good governance model.

Raman Singh was gracious enough to concede defeat and said and we quote from an NDTV report, "For 15 straight years, people of Chhattisgarh gave me and the BJP a chance to serve them. We did our best, and made a difference to the lives of common man. This election was fought in my name so I take moral responsibility for the defeat. We will form a constructive role in the opposition. Even if I work all my life I will not be able to repay the love and support I have received from the people of Chhattisgarh. The party will sit together and find out what we could have done better. "

But he repeated Rajnath Singh's view and said, "These elections were not elections for Delhi, those will be held in 2019.

Why will this have an impact on the 2019 polls? We fought these elections on local issues. The 2019 fight will be about who is up against PM Modi."

The Congress party's state unit chief Bhupesh Baghel expressed his disbelief at the massive mandate and attributed it to strong party organisation. PTI quoted Baghel as he reiterated that this electoral battle was fought for the common man, for farmers, unemployed youth, women, tribals and traders.

Like Rajasthan, here too there are two possibilities for the CM's seat.

There is, of course, Baghel and also veteran TS Singhdeo.

New strategies

One of the big moves Congress pulled off to unsettle BJP was to field former Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee's niece Karuna Shukla against Chief Minister Raman Singh. This was a subtle way to remind voters that winds of change were afoot and Karuna was vocal about this point and was quoted by multiple news sources while campaigning when she said, “BJP has changed its 'chaal, charitra aur chehra' (ways, character and face). It is no more a party envisaged by Atal ji and (Lal Krishna) Advani ji and people of the state know this.”

This was a crushing blow to a party that has tried to appropriate Atal Bihari Bajpayee’s legacy as their own. The fact that Karuna defected to Congress after three decades in the BJP’s fold may not have helped either.

The drama of Shukla and other supporters demanding that the former PM’s ashes be handed over to them could have been lifted straight from a bad seventies film but it has ostensibly succeeded in dividing staunch BJP voters though that may not be the only reason for this mandate. In any case, this is the end of an era.

Beyond the Raman Singh factor

Post his resignation, let us look back at the story of an important protagonist, Raman Singh who rose to power in 2003 once BJP lead runner Dilip Singh Judeo, fell out of favour over corruption allegations.

Raman Singh, an Ayurvedic doctor first cut his political teeth with the Jan Sangh, in the 1970s. He rose steadily after winning his first election in 1983 but what cemented his reputation as a contender was when in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, he defeated Congress veteran and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Motilal Vora.

This victory made him a chief-ministerial probable in 2003 and the rest is literally history. Welfare schemes like the Chhattisgarh Food Security Act, 2012, bolstered his popularity though accusations of scams have followed his governance too and his son's name has allegedly appeared in the Panama Papers.

The Naxal bloodshed at the Darbha valley on May 25, 2013 that took 27 lives including those of Congress leaders Nandkumar Patel, Vidyacharan Shukla, Mahendra Karma and Uday Mudliyar also tainted his record.

The poll results have made one thing startlingly clear though that power equations, even those entrenched for over 15 years can change overnight. And that even big ticket warriors like Raman Singh cannot always win.

And that BJP now has some thinking to do as it prepares for the big battle in 2019.

 

Assembly Elections 2018: Read the latest news, views and analysis here