Oppn unity trumps BJP again
After Karnataka, opposition parties jointly outmanoeuvre BJP & allies in key LS, assembly segments
NEWDELHI: The results of the latest round of by-elections to the Lok Sabha before the 2019 general elections, a set of nine assembly by-elections, and an election for one assembly seat in Karnataka delivered a major political setback to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), raised questions about the sustainability of its electoral dominance, and generated much cheer in the opposition ranks on Thursday.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won two of the four Lok Sabha bypolls (Palghar in Maharashtra and the sole seat in Nagaland) and only one of the ten assembly seats (Tharali in Uttarakhand). The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), in alliance with the Congress, won the Bhandara-Gondia parliamentary seat in Maharashtra.
But in what is being seen as the most politically significant out- come, and a boost to prospects of opposition unity, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), a small regional Jat-dominated party centred in Western Uttar Pradesh, led by the father-son duo of Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhary, won the Kairana Lok Sabha seat.
The RLD was backed by the Samajwadi Party (SP), and the party candidate, now Kairana MP, Tabassum Hasan, was an SP leader till she filed her nomination. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Congress too supported Hasan, in what became a successful joint opposition political bid against the BJP’s Mriganka Singh.
The Kairana victory comes two months after the BJP lost the Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls to the SP, which was backed by BSP. Kairana is a western UP town which has witnessed communal polarisation since 2013. The BJP had comfortably won the seat in the 2014 elections.
The opposition interpreted the verdict as a defeat of the BJP’s ‘communalism’ and the revival of the Jat-Muslim political coalition which had broken down after the riots.
He’s become the go-to person for the BJP’s central leadership when it comes to campaigning in far-flung non-Hindi speaking states such as Tripura and Karnataka. Yet, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s record in home elections since a landslide win in 2017 has been anything but impressive.
Indeed, in the period between March and May, the score is 4-0, and not in his favour. Worse, the losses have come in both the eastern and western parts of the state.
The western part of the state is often described as the BJP’s communal lab for two reasons — a high concentration of Muslim population, which at the time of polling creates reactionary voting in Hindu areas, and the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots which violently divided the Muslims and Jats , the two communities that the late Chaudhary Charan Singh had assiduously united.
The tallest Jat leader from the region had built a social coalition of castes called MAJGAR (Muslims, Ahir, Jat, Gujjar and Rajput) to fight the hegemony of upper castes. His son and grandson — Chaudhury Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhury — partially repaired the social and communal fabric by winning Kairana, regaining some of the legacy they appeared to have frittered away not so long ago.
Dr Satish Prakash, a Dalit activist from Meerut, said Jats, and to some extent Gujjars, voted for the Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Muslim candidate despite the efforts of BJP and Yogi Adityanath to invoke their Hindu sentiments. “Jats also realised (that) though they gave 22 MPs to BJP, they lost their representation in Lok Sabha. Thus, they remained untouched by communal feelings that BJP ignited,” he added.
Till the 2017 assembly elections in the state, Adityanath and his Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV) concentrated on their stronghold of east UP till he was specially sent to west UP to consolidate the BJP’s support base. His efforts paid off and he was rewarded with the chief ministership.
Once BJP chief Amit Shah, when asked if Adityanath was the choice of the RSS, said: “He is the BJP’s choice. His name was decided after consultation with about 48 leaders from the state.”
Now, Adityanath may come under pressure. In the March by-elections in Gorakphur, his pocket borough that he vacated after taking over as CM, the BJP lost. Now, he has lost the other stronghold of BJP in the west where the slogan was “Jinnah or Ganna” a reference to the two factors that many people believe matter in the region, faith and the interests of the sugarcane farmer (ganna is Hindi for sugarcane).
Adityanath’s adviser Mritunjaya Singh, while admitting the government’s failure to publicise the higher disbursement of funds for cane , insisted: “The by-polls were neither a referendum on Yogi’s performance nor on his continuation in office. The fact is, in all the five seats that went to the polls between March and May, the BJP has either retained or increased its vote share, though the party may have lost the seats primarily because of unity in Opposition ranks.”
For months, Adityanath has been pushing for a cabinet reshuffle and he may be allowed to go ahead with one now, say analysts. They point out that the going hasn’t been smooth in the party and that growing differences between the CM and deputy chief minister Keshav Maurya have been a subject of discussion for long.
Senior RSS leader Chandra Mohan said: “Appropriate strategy or changes will be adopted by the party high command after detailed analysis of the party’s defeat in Kairana.”
Insisting the results will not have a direct bearing on the CM, he said the crowd at Yogi’s rally in 47 degrees Celsius temperature is ample proof of his continuing popularity.
Chandra Mohan insisted that the social alliance built by the opposition paved the way for their candidates’ victory.
Still, as a senior government official who asked not to be identified said: “Elections are won by public perception about the powers that be.”
Adityanath will have to change the public perception about his government if it has gone awry. Uttar Pradesh is key to the BJP’s play in 2019.