SHIFTING GROUND
Jharkhand becomes the fifth state to slip out of the BJP’s grip in the past one year, calling into question Modi-Shah’s regional strategy. Can the party arrest the slide?
The result of the assembly election in the state makes it clear that the BJP cannot take its dominance for granted. Where did the party go wrong?
On May 23, riding high on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a nationalistic narrative driven by India’s airstrike on terrorist camps in Pakistan’s Balakot, the BJP won the Lok Sabha election with a massive tally of 303, up from 282 five years ago. Its main rival, the Congress, got only 52 seats, marginally better than in 2014 (44 seats), giving the BJP’s dream of a ‘Congressmukt Bharat (India sans Congress)’ a wing.
Seven months on, the BJP appears to be going downhill, barely securing a second term in Haryana with the help of a new ally, the Jannayak Janata Party, but dramatically losing power in Maharashtra last month. And now, the ouster in Jharkhand, a state the party had swept in the Lok Sabha election, with a 51 per cent vote share. What makes the loss even more humiliating is outgoing chief minister Raghubar Das’s defeat from the Jamshedpur East constituency.
DIMINISHING FOOTPRINT
In the past one year, the BJP has lost five states that account for 127 Lok Sabha seats and 51 Rajya Sabha seats— a sign that the party’s grip on regional politics is slipping. Mid-2018, the BJP and its allies ruled 20 states, occupying 70 per cent of the country’s political space. Following the Jharkhand debacle, this has shrunk by half, leaving the party in power in 15 states only. Today, one can drive from Rajasthan to West Bengal without having to cross a BJP-ruled state.
These adverse results have seriously dented the image of invincibility that PM Modi and BJP president and Union home minister Amit Shah had built over a series of successful election campaigns. It’s now fairly established that Modi’s charisma has a limited appeal in state elections and Shah’s election management can be effectively challenged if the opposition unites and gets its act together. If the assembly election results of Delhi and Bihar in 2015 were early signals, Punjab in 2017, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in 2018, and Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand this year have given the opposition parties reason to feel enthused and hopeful. The only exception has been the Uttar Pradesh election in 2017, where the BJP was challenging the incumbent Samajwadi Party government.
In the next two years, six states crucial to the BJP’s fortunes will go to polls—Delhi and Bihar in 2020 and West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam the following year. The party will be the prime challenger in Delhi and West Bengal while it will fight to retain its hold over Assam and Bihar. Making inroads in Tamil Nadu and
Six states, including West Bengal, crucial to the BJP’s fortunes, will go to polls in 2020-21
Kerala holds the key to the BJP’s expansion plans in south India, where it rules only Karnataka.
UNEASY ALLIES
Even more than the opposition parties, it is the BJP’s allies that feel emboldened by its diminishing success rate. Since 2017, the BJP has lost several partners, such as the Shiv Sena, Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU Party) and the Naga People’s Front (NPF). Others like the Janata Dal (United) may now drive a hard bargain. JD(U) chief and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has already rejected the nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise, proposed by Amit Shah. Another ally, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), has asked the Modi government to include Muslims in the ambit of the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA.
If the trend continues, the BJP may soon find it difficult to bulldoze contentious moves or bills, like the dilution of
Article 370 of the Constitution to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its special status, and the CAA, primarily on the strength of its numbers in both houses of Parliament. If the party continues to lose states or fails to win new ones, its tally in the Rajya Sabha may shrink, increasing the dependence on not only allies but fence-sitters like the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), whose chiefs have already said ‘no’ to NRC. At present, the BJP (83 seats), together with its allies (16 seats), is way short of the halfway mark in the 240-member Rajya Sabha; five seats are vacant.
Coinciding with the Jharkhand result, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, on December 23, appealed to all opposition parties to unite against the CAA. Mamata sees the ongoing protests against the CAA and the Jharkhand verdict as an opportunity to build momentum against the BJP, after Sharad Pawar’s success in bringing together the Shiv Sena, his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress to form the government in Maharashtra and the victory of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-Con
gress-Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) alliance in Jharkhand.
The biggest gainer from the reverses suffered by the BJP is the Congress, which now rules seven states—five on its own and two with allies—against three a year ago. The Congress’s recent successes have again underscored the importance of building the party organisation and leadership in the states if it intends to recapture the national political space.
The election results in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand have also called into question Modi and
Shah’s strategy of breaking caste equations in the states. In Maratha-dominated Maharashtra, Brahmin Devendra Fadnavis was made chief minister; in Jat-majority Haryana, the top post was given to Manohar Lal Khattar, a Punjabi; in the tribal state of Jharkhand, Raghubar Das, a non-tribal, got the reins. While Khattar narrowly managed to retain his chair, the other two lost.
THE WINNING FORMULA
The JMM-led alliance stormed to power in Jharkhand by winning 47 of the 81 assembly seats. Of these, the JMM won 30 seats, the Congress 16 and RJD 1. The ruling BJP, which contested the election without any ally, lost 12 seats to settle for a tally of 25. The decisive verdict finished the prospects of smaller parties, such as the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha and the AJSU Party, to play kingmakers.
Hemant Soren, executive president of the JMM, is all set to become the next chief minister of the state. The 44-year-old leader has inherited the political legacy of his father and JMM founder Shibu Soren, who has been the state’s chief minister thrice, for a total of 10 months.
The advantage appeared to rest with the opposition alliance even before the fivephase voting had started. Unlike the 2014 assembly poll, when the JMM and the Congress contested separately and won fewer seats than the BJP-AJSU Party alliance, the two parties formalised a grand alliance ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election by roping in the RJD. A politically astute Hemant Soren let the Congress lead the alliance for the Lok Sabha contest in lieu of its support in the assembly election. Though the alliance was routed in the Lok Sabha poll, it turned the tables on the BJP in the state election.
WHY THE BJP LOST
As allies, the BJP and AJSU Party won 12 of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand. Contesting the Jharkhand assembly poll independently, they together lost 15 more seats than last time, but had a significantly higher vote share (41.5 per cent) than the opposition alliance (35.3 per cent). The defeat amplifies the BJP’s failure to capitalise on the simple majority secured by the NDA in the state in 2014— Das is the first chief minister to complete a full term—and the support of a strong BJP-led central government.
The biggest reason for the BJP’s humiliating show seems to be the opposition’s success in projecting Das as anti-tribal, by raking up some of his government’s controversial decisions. For instance, in August 2017, the Das government pushed for legislation aimed at stopping
The JMMled alliance projected Raghubar Das as antitribal and raked up his controversial decisions
religious conversions through ‘inducement, blackmail or coercion’. However, the move was largely seen as an attempt to divide the tribal population along religious lines. Also, the Das government’s attempts to change tenancy laws and dilute the tribal people’s rights over land cost the BJP the people’s trust. Two bills were brought in to change the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act and the Santhal Parganas Tenancy Act to pave the way for commercial use of tribal land.
The tribal community is the single-largest voting block in Jharkhand, constituting, according to the 2011 Census, 26.3 per cent of the electorate. Some experts estimate the number to be approximately 32 per cent now.
Sensing the anger in the tribal community, the BJP put the decisions on hold before the Lok Sabha election, but the opposition went to town making the case that the threat would remain if the BJP returned to power. The BJP’s complete alienation from the tribal population has been more or less established in this election. Of the 28 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes, the party won just two, its lowest ever score in these seats in the state. The JMM-Congress won 25 of these 28 seats. In the 2014 assembly election, the BJP won 11 of these seats while 13 went to the JMM.
Jharkhand is home to 32 tribal groups, the four major ones being Santhal, Munda, Ho and Oraon. While the BJP is traditionally known to control the Munda vote, the JMM has a following among the Santhals. The Congress is considered to have the backing of the Ho and Oraon tribes. This assembly election saw the Mundas desert the BJP.
With Das, who represents the backward Teli caste, the BJP had attempted counter-polarisation, betting high on the numerically significant non-Yadav Other Backward
Class (OBC) votes. The BJP’s strategy was to add non-Muslim, non-tribal votes by projecting Das’s credentials as an OBC leader. It did not cut ice with the electorate.
Even BJP leaders concede that the party had long ignored the writing on the wall. “The anti-incumbency against the Raghubar Das government was evident. The BJP-led alliance had lost six of the seven assembly bypolls held in Jharkhand since December 2015,” says a senior BJP leader. The central leadership, says the leader, sensed the flaws in centring the poll campaign around Das. The campaign slogans were changed from the initial ‘Ghar Ghar Raghubar (Every home backs Raghubar)’ and ‘Jharkhand Pukara, Raghubar Dobara (Re-elect Raghubar, cries Jharkhand)’ to ‘Jharkhand Pukara, Bhajapa Dobara’. The party also stopped bragging that its tally would cross 65 seats this time. Midway through the voting phases, the BJP changed tack from projecting the stable government provided by Das to the Modi government’s measures to strengthen national security. BJP president Amit Shah sought to appeal to Hindu sentiments by promising a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya.
The JMM did not get drawn into these binaries and talked about safeguarding ‘Jal, Jangal, Zameen (Water, Forest, Land)’ for the locals. Taking a dig at Shah, Soren said: “For me, every hungry person is Lord Ram and their hunger the Ram temple. For me, feeding them will be akin to constructing the Ram temple.” At a time when the economy is going through a downturn, this sentiment seems to have resonated with the people of Jharkhand. It also had a lesson for the BJP—to stick to basic issues in the states rather than attempt consolidation in the name of religion or a militant nationalism. A lesson learnt the hard way.
Unlike the BJP’s focus on CAA and Ram temple, the JMM talked of safeguarding ‘Jal, Jangal, Zameen’ for the locals