Modi’s heartland sweep a warning sign for complacent Congress

Despite being widely seen as the frontrunner, Congress lost three key States due to its inability to adapt, a weakness it must address before 2024.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi soaks in the adulation on his arrival at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi on December 3. | Photo Credit: Prakash Singh/Bloomberg

The Assembly elections in five States that were widely seen as a prelude to 2024 yielded very contrarian results. A resurgent Congress was heartbroken as a less-than-confident BJP swept the heartland. The Congress won Telangana despite expectations that K. Chandrashekar Rao’s strong social welfare push would favour his re-election, while the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) registered an unexpected win in Mizoram.

Having lost the three States it had snatched from the BJP in 2018, the Congress is now in power only in Himachal Pradesh in the north, which sends four members to the Lok Sabha, and in Karnataka and Telangana in the south, which send 28 and 17 members, respectively.

The interesting aspect of the Telangana verdict is that the Congress defeated a regional party, something that usually eludes it. Be it the DMK and the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, the Janata Dal in Karnataka and Bihar, the SP and the BSP in Uttar Pradesh, or the Trinamool in Bengal, they have always denied the Congress space. It has allied with one or the other of these parties to stay relevant, as in Tamil Nadu, or to stop the BJP from gaining a foothold, as in West Bengal.

Wresting Telangana from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), which was in power for 10 years, has probably revived hopes within the Congress of repeating the feat in Odisha in 2024, where an ageing Naveen Patnaik has been leading the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government since 2000.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi being garlanded by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and BJP national president J.P. Nadda during a BJP victory programme in New Delhi on December 3. | Photo Credit: Shrikant Singh/ANI

In Mizoram, the Congress strategy was to go it alone, completely misreading the mood swing towards regional parties. While the relatively new ZPM won on what some say was a campaign against the MNF-BJP alliance, others allege that the BJP actually supported the ZPM campaign. Either way, the Congress did not enter into any alliance and ended up with one seat, after ruling the State alternately with the MNF for 36 years.

BJP in pole position

As for the BJP, these results catapult it to an enviable position ahead of the general election. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that the results are a guarantee for a win in 2024.

The vote share of the two national parties tells its own tale. In Rajasthan, the BJP won 115 seats and Congress 69, but in vote percentage the BJP’s 41.69 per cent is only about 2 per cent more than the 39.53 per cent the Congress got.

In Chhattisgarh, the BJP got 54 seats and the Congress 35, but the vote percentage gap is a little more than 4 per cent, with the BJP getting 46.27 per cent and the Congress 42.23 per cent. The maximum gap is in Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP not only won 163 seats against the Congress’ 66 but also 48.85 per cent votes against the latter’s 40.40 per cent. In Telangana, the Congress won 64 seats with 39.40 per cent votes but the BRS, which won 39 seats, was close with 37.35 per cent votes.

Congress Madhya Pradesh President Kamal Nath with senior leader Digvijaya Singh and other leaders during a review meeting of party candidates after the party's loss in the State Assembly elections, in Bhopal on December 5. | Photo Credit: PTI

What about the INDIA bloc?

While both political pundits and INDIA bloc allies have hit out at the Congress for refusing to ally with bloc parties regionally, the numbers indicate that even if the constituents had contested as a bloc, the results would have been similar.

Allies such as the SP and the AAP only managed an insignificant percentage of votes. And, in fact, the AAP’s vote share was lower than that of NOTA’s. Most importantly, the results raise serious questions about the Congress’ election strategy. Let us break it down by tactics.

First, Rahul Gandhi decided to focus on the caste census based on Bihar’s recent experiment and because he wishes to take up issues that concern the marginalised. However, neither the party nor Rahul appear to have studied its impact beforehand. Besides antagonising the dominant castes in all three States, it appears to have led to a reverse consolidation of tribal votes in favour of the BJP in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Clearly, the social engineering that works in Bihar does not suit these States. More importantly, a campaign that suits parties with a socialist history, such as the JD(U), the RJD, and the SP, may not necessarily work for the Congress, which thrives in the centrist space and as an umbrella coalition of disparate caste groups.

The second tactic that did not work was the soft Hindutva pitch: be it Kamal Nath courting Bagheshwar Baba in Madhya Pradesh or Bhupesh Baghel organising a Ramayana National Festival. The Congress’ hastily cooked mash is no match for the BJP’s cleverly crafted subaltern Hindutva through which several intermediary castes, backward classes, and Dalits have been drafted into the larger Hindutva fold.

Highlights

• Congress Heartbroken, BJP Triumphant: The Congress suffered a major setback as the BJP swept the heartland States, despite Congress’ win in Telangana and the unexpected victory of the Zoram People’s Movement in Mizoram.
• Congress Rekindles Hope in Telangana: Wresting Telangana from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi has revived Congress’ hopes of repeating the feat in Odisha in 2024.
• BJP Catapulted Ahead of 2024: These results strengthen the BJP’s position ahead of the General Election, with Prime Minister Modi confident of victory. The BJP’s strategies, including creating a Modi-versus-Rahul narrative, indicate its roadmap for 2024.

In Chhattisgarh, the overdependence on Bhupesh Baghel backfired. That the party was unable to retain the tribal State it won with a huge margin in 2018 is a reflection on the government’s underperformance. The campaign promise of direct economic benefits to almost every section was not enough. Given that the majority of the population here is below the poverty line, the failure of cash benefits seems predicated on the BJP’s more emotional and communal campaign. Besides, the Congress was no match for the BJP’s devious use of the Enforcement Directorate to name Baghel in the Mahadev app scam, based on an allegation that was later retracted.

In Madhya Pradesh, although the two parties were neck and neck, the BJP drew ahead in the last minute mostly because the Congress alienated the fence-sitters with its focus on a caste census and by dismissing the impact of Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s grassroots OBC connect. The party is paying dearly for its inability to read the pitch correctly and tailor strategies accordingly.

The heavy dependence on regional satraps like Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh in Madhya Pradesh, Baghel and T.S. Singh Deo in Chhattisgarh, and Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan was another millstone. It underlines the need for the Congress to shape up into a party of workers instead of a party of leaders.

No Chief Minister face, no problem

Contrast this to the BJP’s highly centralised campaign, where it chose not to project a chief ministerial face in any of the States, to get a sense of the party’s discipline and cohesion, which gives it the edge in elections. The results have triggered sharp retorts against the Congress by regional Opposition parties. The Congress was forced to call off a planned meeting of the INDIA bloc on December 6 after a number of allies objected to the short notice and cited personal engagements. The meeting is now fixed for December 17, which could see fireworks.

With the Congress losing to the BJP in direct contests while regional parties—the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand and the BJD in Odisha—having managed to stop the Modi juggernaut, there is no big brother in the INDIA bloc now.

Looking ahead

The results have given a broad indication of the 2024 election largely becoming a contest between the BJP and regional parties in the north, with the Congress remaining an insignificant force in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Delhi, and now substantially marginalised in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh.

The onus of taking on the BJP will hence fall on the regional parties, such as the RJD and JD(U), the SP and BSP, the Trinamool, AAP, BJD, and JMM, in their respective States.

Unemployment is a major issue against the Modi government, but the party seems to compensate for this with a grassroots campaign and deeper organisational outreach.

The BJP’s strategies this time indicate its 2024 route, where it will try to create a Modi versus Rahul binary, which is bound to go against the latter given the complete control the BJP has established over media messaging.

The nascent north-south divide in voting patterns will not affect the BJP much since north India has a larger number of seats. But the fact that the ruling BJP is insignificant in the south while the principal opposition party is practically wiped out of the north does not augur well for the polity.