FIVE-NIL CREATES NO PANIC IN BJP

BOTH SHATRUGHAN AND BABUL SUPRIYO, WHO WON FROM BENGAL, HAVE BEEN STAR LEADERS OF THE BJP IN THE PAST

Political pundits caution against taking bypoll results seriously, for they are often won by the party in power in a particular state. The BJP’s defeat at the hands of the Samajwadi Party in the bypolls to Gorakhpur and Phulpur in 2018 is an example. A year later, the saffron party won 62 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

Thus, the drubbing the BJP got in the byelections held in five seats (one Lok Sabha and four assembly) in four states—West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh—may not worry it much. Barring Bihar, it’s not in power in the other three. In Chhattisgarh, where the assembly poll is due next year, there is enough time to repair the damage. Besides, in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, the BJP has not lost its vote share.

But there is more to politics than just electoral arithmetic. Despite mounting a high-pitched campaign against the TMC in Bengal, the BJP’s electoral outing was a disaster. In the Ballygunge assembly seat, it finished third behind the CPI(M). What added to the embarrassment was that the two TMC winners—Shatrughan Sinha in the Asansol Lok Sabha seat and Babul Supriyo in Ballygunge— were former BJP star leaders. Sinha, in fact, helped TMC wrest Asansol for the first time.

In Bihar, the RJD’s victory in the Bochahan assembly constituency is a warning sign for the BJP. Though it has claimed that it lost because former ally Vikassheel Insaan Party fielded a candidate, the result shows the importance of having better ties with allies, particularly in Bihar, where the BJP-JD(U) coalition has faced friction. In Maharashtra, Congress candidate Jayashri Jadhav won the bypoll to the Kolhapur North assembly seat. In Chhattisgarh, Congress’s Yashoda Verma won the Khairagarh assembly bypoll.

On April 16, the day the bypoll results came out, opposition leaders Sonia Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar, M.K. Stalin, Hemant Soren, Tejashwi Yadav, Farooq Abdullah and Sitaram Yechury sent a letter to PM Narendra Modi, requesting him to maintain communal harmony. The timing could be coincidence, but success in a national electoral battle against the BJP will need consistent unity among opposition parties that goes beyond issuing joint statements. That’s nowhere in sight at the moment. ■