UP Elections | For BJP it's a goldmine, for Congress it's a minefield

Representative image (Image by BJP via Wikimedia Commons 2.0)

The combustible Ukraine quagmire that has upended the fragile post-1991 world order has understandably captured public attention, but rest assured, Uttar Pradesh will soon be back in the headlines. It is the most popular cliché in Indian political vocabulary: The road to Delhi passes through Lucknow.

Pundits believe the 2022 UP assembly election results are a bellwether for the 2024 general elections. Based on opinion polls, it is a bipolar contest between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP). It maybe only rhetorical causticness, but SP leader Akhilesh Yadav has dismissed the Congress with contemptuous nonchalance; it could get zero seats, he mocked.

But Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has probably played a smart card; she is rebuilding a battered Congress for Lok Sabha 2024. Realistically, she probably knows that the assembly elections are just a resurrection strategy.

Statistical data proves that the BJP and the Congress’s national storyboard for 2024 is inextricably intertwined with UP. There are lessons to be learnt for the grand old party if it harbours ambitions of a comeback. They are:

BJP Has Spectacular Spikes, Congress Has Sharp Lows

In 1985, the Congress had an absolute majority with 269 seats in the UP assembly. The BJP had just 16. The Congress swept all 85 seats in UP in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections. It was not just a frontrunner, it had a stranglehold on the most crucial Hindi heartland state.

Then the Congress inexplicably self-destructed through some inelegant blunders; the Shah Bano case, the ban on Salman Rushdie’s book, and the opening of the Ayodhya gates for shilanyas. On a silver platter, they gave the BJP a glittering prize called UP.

The Congress lost a staggering 207 seats in the 1989 Lok Sabha polls, down from its mammoth 404 seats in 1984. Not surprisingly, in the 1991 UP elections, the BJP saw an extraordinary spike forming the government with 221 seats (a 14-fold increase in six years). The Congress vaporised, winning only 46 seats (an 83 percent fall from 1985). From a virtual wipe-out of just two Lok Sabha seats in 1984, the BJP had an impressive 85 seats in 1989.

Fast forward to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections; the BJP catapulted from 116 in 2009 to 282 seats (a 143 percent growth), while the Congress was thoroughly demolished at a wretched 44 (down 78 percent from 206 seats in 2009). In the 2019 LS elections, the BJP increased its tally to 303 seats.

While aggressive communal polarisation, massive propaganda, voter mobilisation, and oratorical leadership helped the BJP, the Congress defeat has a peculiar pattern: it appears to be frozen like a deer caught in the headlights. In the last two general elections, the BJP has won 71 and 62 seats from UP, while the Congress tally was at an abysmal two and one seat.

Congress Stays Low, BJP Bounces Back

For the Congress, the most disturbing truism is that once it vacates space, it mostly struggles to recapture lost territory. It is a mistaken notion that the Congress collapse in UP is a recent phenomenon; it has had single-digit vote share (7-9 percent) since 1996. Not surprisingly in the last 25 years, the Congress’ highest score in UP is 33 seats in 1996, followed by 22 in 2009.

Does it take so long for a rebirth of a national party in its home bastion that has produced several Prime Ministers? Party loyalists were smug that the 44 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 was just a freak black swan moment. But in 2019, the Congress was still scraping the bottom of the barrel with 52 seats.

The BJP story, however, is a luminous contrast. From the height of 221 seats in the UP assembly in 1991, though it went down to 88 in 2002, 51 in 2007, and 47 in 2012, it never totally crumbled. The saffron party’s vote-share hovered around 15-17 percent, giving it a substantive foundation to stage that remarkable comeback of 312 seats in 2017.

The Congress’ neglect of UP is an unconscionable betrayal of its passionate workers who have suffered ignominious isolation. It is also akin to political hara-kiri at the national level.

A Hunger To Win

As the UP figures suggest, instead of galvanising itself, the Congress diminishes further after defeat, before it gets obliterated altogether. In February, in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi rubbed that in. The Congress has blithely been crashed in the northeastern states, Gujarat, UP, Bihar, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha. There is no rational justification for such a prolonged rigor mortis.

By contrast, the BJP when it gets knocked down (and it has several times), does not stay down. Since 1991, its lowest Lok Sabha count is 116 seats. It buckles up, reinvents itself, while the Congress permits a mindless decimation. For instance, after literally metamorphosing Delhi under the late Sheila Dikshit, it had an awful meltdown (it has zero seats in the current Delhi assembly).

Basically, even if the BJP loses to the SP in this assembly election, but remains far ahead of the Congress (as is likely), it remains in pole position for 2024.

That is the real paradox that Priyanka Gandhi is hoping to jeopardise by preparing a defunct Congress for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. For inspiration, she has probably looked at the impassioned Indira Gandhi who staged a magnificent comeback from 153 Lok Sabha seats in 1977 to 353 in 1980.

The BJP is correctly castigated for its immoral ‘saam, daam, dand, bhed’ politics. It has indeed destroyed institutions, savaged democracy, and made politics more transactional. But they also know that there are no permanent winners and losers in politics. Things change, and quickly. Modi’s aggressive assault in Lok Sabha against the Congress establishes that he knows his blind spots, and so does Priyanka Gandhi.

Sanjay Jha is former National Spokesperson of the Congress, and author of The Great Unravelling: India After 2014. Twitter: @JhaSanjay.

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.