Setbacks may force India’s ruling BJP to prepone general elections
The next general elections in India are due early next year, but speculation is rife in political circles that the polls might be held at the year-end.
The speculation gained momentum with the president of the main ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Amit Shah, telling his party’s spokespersons and social media managers recently to be prepared as the party would be in poll mode after August 15, India’s Independence Day.
Expectations that the general elections would be preponed stem from the fact that the BJP has been losing popularity with each passing day, after suffering repeated defeats in recent bypolls (in parliamentary constituencies) in politically important states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Bihar.
A recent poll done by Lokniti-CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) found that the drop in Modi’s popularity has been quite sharp.
Quoting the poll findings, a leading columnist Tavleen Singh recently wrote in one of her blogs, “Today close to half the Hindu voters polled across India admit that they are unlikely to vote for Modi next time. Muslims, Sikhs and Christians were unanimous in their desire not to.”
The party lost two crucial by-polls in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur and Phulpur parliamentary constituencies and Araria parliamentary constituency in Bihar in March, followed by a crushing defeat in Kairana parliamentary constituency, also in Uttar Pradesh which is politically the biggest state.
Earlier in February, it had lost in Alwar and Ajmer parliamentary constituencies in the western state of Rajasthan, ruled by the BJP, and in Uluberia parliamentary constituency in eastern state of West Bengal ruled by BJP’s adversary Mamata Banerjee. In June this year, the BJP also lost one parliamentary by-poll in Maharashtra’s Bhandara-Gondia constituency, though it had a face-saver win in Palghar parliamentary constituency.
The repeated defeats of the BJP candidates in parliamentary by-elections have given enough indications that the main ruling party is facing a tough incumbency factor among the country’s voters.
The key reasons cited for BJP’s poor performance could be summed up as increasing incidents of lynching of dalits (lowest caste in Indian community) and minority community members, particularly Muslims over beef, and the “not-so-successful” economic policies of Demonetization and GST (goods and services tax).
In January, violent clashes had erupted at Bhima-Koregaon, a tiny village in Maharashtra state during a commemorative event organized by a Dalit organization. Incidents of lynching of people belonging to dalit and Muslim communities have been recurring. The latest being in Dhule in Maharashtra where five persons belonging to a nomadic community were lynched on suspicion of being child-lifters.
A leading English magazine, India Today, carried its lead story in the latest edition, titled “The New Gameplan,” saying that the BJP was concerned at losing popularity among the Dalits and lower caste people.
Those against the two big economic reforms of Demonetization and GST introduced by the present government said that they failed to yield the desired results.
Criticizing GST implementation on its first anniversary on July 1, Indian National Congress leader and country’s former finance minister P. Chidambaram described it as a “Grossly Scary Tax.”
The BJP’s poor electoral performance in recent months in the states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan should be a cause of worry for those at the helm of party’s affairs. Put together these big states share over 260 parliamentary constituencies among themselves, out of the total 543 constituencies across the nation which go to polls every five years. The BJP had won 170 parliamentary constituencies in these states in the 2014 general elections but things do not look easy for the party this time.
In the next general elections, the BJP is expected to face a formidable combination of two strong caste-based state-level parties the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh; and its alliance with old-time political ally Shiv Sena appears tattered in Maharashtra, another politically big state with 48 parliamentary constituencies.