Three strong sitting CMS give new twist to BJP poll strategy
Not just Modishah, focus on local leaders for the first time since 2014
NEWDELHI: Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan represent a departure from all the state elections the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fought under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah since 2014. This is because it is an incumbent and not a challenger, and even as an incumbent, it has powerful state leaders who have their own voice, opinion, stakes, and patronage networks and therefore are almost equal partners in the party’s strategy and not dependent entirely on the Modi-shah machine. This together make it an entirely new kind of electoral battle.
Let us take each of these dimensions carefully.
For one, the BJP was the challenger and not the incumbent in 19 of 22 state elections held since Modi took over as Prime Minister. In 2014, it contested Jharkhand,haryanaandmaharashtra as a frontline opposition party. It won. At the end of the year, the BJP also managed to win a substantial number of seats in Jammu & Kashmir and eventually formed a government with the Peoples Democratic Party.
In 2015, it was out of power in Delhi and Bihar, but lost in both states. In 2016, it made its entry into the Northeast by winning
CHHATTISGARH
NARENDRA MODI, PM
SINCE 2014, BJP HAS FOUGHT 15 ELECTIONS AS A CHALLENGER. IT HAS FORMED GOVT IN 12 OF THESE STATES
Assam on a fiercely anti-establishment platform and a promise of throwing out illegal immigrants. In 2017, its biggest success was Uttar Pradesh, where it was once again the primary opposition force. This was the case in Uttarakhand too. Later in the year, it stormed to power in Himachal Pradesh battling the Congress government. Its success in the Northeast -- Manipur in 2017; Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura this year -- once again happened as an opposition force. In Karnataka, too, in 2018, it fought the ruling Congress , emerged as the single-largest party but was beaten in the government formation game by a surprise Congressjanata Dal (Secular) alliance.
This means that in the last four-and-a-half years, the BJP has fought 15 elections as a challenger and an important player in the state’s polity. It was able to form the government in 12 of these states . There are four other states where it participated as an opposition force but was a minor player -- West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry.
There have been three cases when the BJP was in power and had to defend its record -- Punjab, Goa and Gujarat. Three of the states now heading for polls fall in the same category, but there is a distinction between the earlier states and the current lot.
In Punjab, the government was primarily seen as an Shiromani Akali Dal government and the anger was directed against the Badal family after a decade in power. The BJP was the junior partner. It did not have a powerful state leader, and unusually for the Modi-shah combine, did not invest everything in the election.
In Goa, the government was led by the BJP but then CM Laxmikant Parsekar -- Manohar Parikkar had shifted to Delhi -- was a relative political lightweight. The Congress emerged as the singlelargest party but the BJP cobbled together an alliance. Parikkar went back. Modi, Shah and Nitin Gadkari displayed agile post-poll thinking. Gujarat comes closest in terms of a comparative experience with MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. The party organisation is deep, like in the other three states. It faced anti-incumbency after over 15 years in power, which is similar to voter fatigue visible in MP and Chhattisgarh. There was a degree of rural distress and the party’s wide social coalition seemed to be fracturing. There was also internal dissension. But there are two big differences with Gujarat. The BJP in the state was not led by powerful figures. Vijay Rupani paled in comparison to the Narendra Modi years. Nitin Patel, the deputy chief minister, was unable to pull in his own community. Given Modi and Shah’s roots in the state as well as the enormous stakes for them, this was their election more than that of any other leader. There is widespread consensus that it was in the final few weeks that Modi was able to swing the election playing on his own Gujarati identity. And this is what makes MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh so distinct.
In each of these states, there is a powerful CM - Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh, Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh and Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan. These are also the only three BJP CMS who predate the ModiShah era of domination of the party. The first two have a relatively decent working relationship with the party’s central leadership, while Raje has a somewhat more difficult equation. But in all three, it is clear that the state leader has an important voice in deciding party strategy, nature of the campaign, ticket distribution, caste groups to work on, micro-alliances to stitch, and key messages to push. In no election till now have top state leaders had as much autonomy. In fact, in most elections, the BJP did not even have CM faces -be it Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana, Bihar, UP, Uttarakhand, Tripura or Manipur. In places where it had a CM face, the leader’s say was rather limited in terms of larger strategy – be it Kiran Bedi in Delhi, who had no roots in the organisation, or even BS Yeddyurappa in Karnataka, who had to deal with other topranking leaders.
This has meant that while these elections are Modi-shah elections, but they are equally, if not more, Chouhan, Singh and Raje elections in the respective states. Modi will unleash a campaign blitz but it appears to lack the frenzy and intensity of Gujarat; Shah has been working assiduously on the organisation but he has to contend with other voices. In that sense, the party’s decision-making is far more decentralised in this election than in the past.
This mix of being an incumbent, of having strong regional leaders defending their record, and of having Modi and Shah as the supplement rather than as the anchor, makes the three elections distinct. The outcome will have significant implications for the BJP’S own internal dynamics.