Delhi victory may cause BJP MLAs anxiety over seats

It’s the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) again. The Wednesday verdict for MCD election seems to be revenge for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, whose victory march following the stellar performance in 2014 was first halted in Delhi by Arvind Kejriwal.

The BJP won just three out of 70 assembly segments in 2015 — AAP won the rest — but made a strong comeback in 2017.

These results carry wider national ramifications as an emphatic victory for the BJP will only add to its image of invincibility and leave a divided opposition further demoralised in the run-up to the general elections which will take place in 2019.

The BJP swept all the three civic bodies in Delhi giving the saffron party a reason to rejoice and, possibly, an occasion for the party’s legislators to worry.

The BJP has held the Capital’s municipal corporations for the last 10 years and managed to beat the anti-incumbency by dropping all its sitting councillors.

The strategy to cut on the personal anti-incumbency of the councillors, which might have pulled down the party, worked as the BJP maintained its majority in all three corporations.

As Gujarat chief minister, Modi first used this tactic to win three consecutive assembly elections in 2002, 2007 and 2012.

Every time, nearly about onefourths of sitting legislators were replaced.

Gujarat has been under uninterrupted BJP rule since 1998 and it will go to the polls again later this year.

The party might fall back on Modi’s tested and successful tactic to win the western state, which will go to poll simultaneously with the hill state of Himachal Pradesh that the BJP lost to the Congress in 2012.

Karnataka, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura will have assembly elections between February and April next year.

Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan will go to polls in December, before the bells ring for the next Lok Sabha election.