What RS poll results show

Satraps and alliances are key for the Opposition, but can’t blunt BJP’s domination of Indian polity

From the down-to-the-wire Rajya Sabha election on Friday — where, keeping with a trend seen in recent years, a largely anodyne event turned into a thrilling political fight due to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s inclination to take no election for granted — there are four takeaways. One, despite the BJP’s best efforts over the past three years and some unforced errors by its leaders, the unlikely coalition of the Maha Vikas Aghadi has emerged as a strong challenger to the national hegemon in Maharashtra. That the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress corralled their lawmakers away from the temptation of defection and managed to put up a strong challenge to the BJP should bestow some stability to the government.

Two, for an enfeebled and centralised Congress, the election is yet another lesson in the importance of strong regional leaders. That the party managed to pull through in Rajasthan is almost solely due to the individual stature of Ashok Gehlot, who led the party’s fight from the front. For a party that has been haemorrhaging state-level leaders for a decade, the results might give pause to a party in a protracted leadership crisis to focus instead on empowering grassroots leaders. Three, the close fight in Karnataka indicates that politics continues to be fluid in the state and the government under chief minister BS Bommai is yet to stabilise. With elections due next year and the Janata Dal (Secular) in some trouble — its candidate received the lowest votes for the fourth Upper House seat from the state — it appears that the state election will see a keen contest between the incumbent BJP and the Congress.

But as entertaining as the contests in these four states were, they cannot distract from the bigger picture: That, at the end of the day, the BJP has bolstered its hold on national politics and created a smooth glide path for any legislative agenda. The Opposition may have done well to hold on, but its position on the ground has not been strengthened (indeed, it has only managed to win what it should have got automatically due to its assembly strengths, but for the BJP’s political aggression), and its parliamentary challenge is bound to be even weaker between now and 2024. With the largest arsenal of members in the Upper House in a generation, the

BJP is set to, once again, change the contours of Indian politics. That is the fourth, and most important, takeaway from the polls.