In run-up to 2019 LS polls, why BJP needs to be worried

NEWDELHI: The importance of the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recently concluded Kairana by-election is not lost on the party. A bevy of senior ministers from the BJP, chief minister Yogi Adityanath, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi all campaigned for this by-election. ( Modi technically launched a project after the last day of campaigning in nearby Baghpat, but the speech he gave clearly demonstrates Kairana was on his mind.)

A grand coalition of “BJP opposition parties” — the Congress, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD),theSamajwadiParty(SP), and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) — banded together to contest against the BJP this time.

KairanaisrightnexttoMuzaffarnagar, the location of the riots betweentheJatandMuslimcommunities that propelled the BJP to historic victorymargins in the area during the 2014 national election. In 2014, the BJP won by a whopping 2.4 lakh votes over the nearest party in Kairana.

Amazingly, the coalition decidedthattheRLD,aJat-dominatedparty,wouldfieldaMuslim candidate, trying to bridge the dividebetweentwocommunities that clearly do not get along.

In stark contrast to the BJP, the grand coalition ran a more demurecampaignbuttressedby local RLD leaders while big names in the coalition like AkhileshYadavandMayawatibarely even acknowledged an election was taking place.

AvictoryovertheBJPinKairana, everyone agreed before the election,woulddemonstratethat a grand coalition strategy could defeatthemostextremeforms of communalpolarisation.Whenall was said and done, the coalition garnered 51.2% of the vote and defeated the BJP by more than 40,000 votes.

This is not just a blip for the BJP.It’sapartofamoreworrying trend. Like Kairana, the grand coalitionbestedtheBJPinrecent by-elections in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, widely perceived to be BJP strongholds.

Many analysts (including this one) focused on the BJP’s superior performance in 2017, almost mimicking its performance in 2014.TheBJPwon71ofthe78constituencies it contested in Uttar Pradesh in the2014 national elec- tion, with a vote share of 42.3%. It won 312 of the 378 seats in contested in the 2017 assembly elections in the state with a 39.7% vote share.

What was lost in this discussion,however,wasthattheBJP’s main oppositionparties gained a lot of vote share in 2017 as compared to 2014 in UP.

This figure displays the combined vote shares for the parties inthegrandcoalitionforKairana and two recently concluded by-elections, in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, for the years of 2014, 2017, and 2018 — corresponding to a national election, a state election, and a by-election, respectively. In Kairana, for instance, the parties in the grand coalition gained almost 10 percentage points between 2014 and 2017. As the combined vote shares for the grand coalition swelled in 2017, thestrategyof“oppositionunity” became eminently more winnable in subsequent elections.

Thisdisjuncturebetween2014 results and recent election results is not just a UP phenomenon. In the recently concluded Karnatakastateelection,theBJP won104ofthe222 seats contested with a 36.2% vote share. Had it performedat2014levels,itwould have won 132 seats with a 43% vote share.

NodoubttheBJPwillcomfort itself with the fact that state elections and by-elections are different from national elections. There is some truth to this — the recent by-elections saw much lowerturnoutthanthesameconstituencies in 2014.

TheKairana,Gorakhpur,and Phulpur by-elections saw 58%, 47%, and 37% turnout, respectively,whiletheseconstituencies saw 73%, 55%, and 50% turnout, respectively, in 2014.

But, nonetheless, the BJP must be worried that it can no longer ride on the coat tails of Modi and the party’s 2014 performance.Thequestionremains: Will Narendra Modi be able to regain his magic before the upcoming national polls?