Corruption topples Cong apple cart

Corruption is a potent election swinger. That’s the single most important reason for the BJP’s spectacular victory in Himachal Pradesh.

The saffron surge was powered by a groundswell of public ire against the incumbent Congress that ended up paying a heavy price for the ‘mafia raj’ tag that it had acquired in five years of power in Shimla.

It’s easy to interpret Monday’s verdict through the rotational dynamics of bipolar politics of the hill state, where the Congress and the BJP have ruled alternately since 1977. This time, however, the sheer scale and spread of the BJP’s resounding win of twothirds majority has more to do with a skilful amplification of the issue of corruption that eventually toppled the Congress apple cart.

From the outset, BJP strategists focused their poll pitch on just one person: 83-year-old Congress lynchpin Virbhadra Singh, who, for much of his fifth tenure as chief minister, has been investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Enforcement Directorate and the income tax department for cases of corruption and disproportionate assets. That armed the BJP for fusillades against the Congress and its most recognisable, but beleaguered, face in the hill state.

MODI PRIME VOTE CATCHER FOR BJP

If Himachal proved such an easy ride for the BJP – compared to a hard-fought contest in Gujarat – it was because its campaignersin-chief Narendra Modi and Amit Shah deftly tapped into popular mood by pitching their high-decibel poll narrative around the cash-and-carry allegations against the Congress rule – in a sense, a repeat of BJP’s line of attack in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Withering barbs and acerbic humour was the staple of Modi’s blistering attack in his seven rallies across the state .

He taunted Virbhadra and Rahul Gandhi as “zamanati neta (leaders out on bail)”, and called upon the voters to rid the dev bhoomi (the abode of the Gods as Himachal is known) of the ‘demons ofmafia raj’.

In the end, the BJP’s tirade built on corruption and law and order overwhelmed the Congress poll pitch pegged on GST and demonetisation and its development plank.

Undoubtedly, Modi’s charisma, coupled with a well-oiled election machine and an aggressive RSS-led grassroots mobilisation, helped the BJP decimate the Congress even in its traditional bastion of upper Himachal where the rape and murder of a school girl in the run-up to elections turned the heat on the incumbent. That Modi was the prime voter catcher is also evident from a stunning defeat of state stalwart and two-time chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal who, in a lasthour change of strategy, was projected for the top job.

BEST BET TURNS CONG’S LIABILITY

For the Congress, which staked its comeback gambit solely on Virbhadra Singh, the scam-hit scion of princely Rampur Bushehar, turned out to be liability. In that sense, the party may have erred in assessing Singh’s appeal and ability to galvanise the party rank and file which was divided between his loyalists and his detractors.

Not that the party high command had much of a choice. For, Singh has been the party’s only bet for four decades now. And, he has grown larger than the party, surviving on a fiercely loyal section of state leaders and cadres. A feeble attempt at fighting this election under a collective leadership with an active role to state Congress chief Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu was stymied by his baiter Singh who, in the run-up to the elections, even threatened not to contest and campaign.

The party acquiesced to his hardball tactics. Not only did it project Singh as its chief ministerial face, much against the opinion of several leaders, it gave him a free hand in candidate selection and even relaxed its ‘one-family-one-ticket’ formula that allowed Singh to field his son, Vikramaditya Singh, from his home turf of Shimla (rural). For Virbhadra Singh, this election was not only about his political survival in the face of serious court cases, it also reflected his dynastic dreams.

At one level, the Congress’s nemesis in yet another state – of 29 states, it’s now in power only in Punjab, Karnataka, Meghalaya and Mizoram – underscores the limits of the popular appeal of a hegemonic regional satrap. It also reflects the failure to groom a second-rung leadership. Clearly, the Congress will now have to look beyond Virbhadra Singh. While the party can take heart from Gujarat, it can ill-afford to ignore the hard lessons from its humiliating downhill slide in Himachal

WITH VIRBHADRA HIS TARGET, MODI DEFTLY SET THE POLL NARRATIVE AROUND THE CASHANDCARRY CHARGES AGAINST THE CONGRESS RULE