While the recently held Assembly elections have increased the stature of Mamata Banerjee, M K Stalin, Pinarayi Vijayan, Himanta Biswa Sarma and N Rangaswamy, it has at the same time once again dented the reputation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah of being match-winners. Never before in the last seven years they have appeared so vulnerable as now.
In the same way the results in the rural bodies poll held in the four phases in the second half of April in Uttar Pradesh has seriously cut the standing of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, as the Bharatiya Janata Party suffered humiliating defeat in most of the 75 districts, notably in Ayodhya, Banaras, Mathura, Prayag Raj and Gorakhpur. All these five places are known for their religious significance and the Sangh Parivar has always been exploiting the sentiment of a large section of Hindus for the last three decades and a half. The party could not win even 20 per cent seats in these five districts. This has happened when the Assembly election is to take place nine months from now.
The problem with the BJP is that the defeats in West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as Uttar Pradesh have come at a time when the ruling party at the Centre is grappling with a challenge from a totally different quarter: that is corona virus.
The party’s graph is tumbling with the passage of each day in such a way that it could not even celebrate the victory in Assam where it managed to retain power. Though in the post-Modi era there is little scope for autopsy of the defeat within the party yet even the media failed to make proper post-mortem as its focus is now so much on the pandemic. Thus, many aspects of Verdict 2021 could not be properly analysed. For example, the results in West Bengal and Assam provide a study in contrast. Why the same BJP succeeded in retaining power in Assam while it suffered ignoble defeat in West Bengal when it tried its level best to socially and communally polarise the society and played the Bangladesh card? Why was the party compelled to keep the Citizenship Amendment Act on the backburner in Assam and overplay the same card in West Bengal?
A close look into the results in these two states suggests that the saffron brigade could not succeed in West Bengal because of the presence of a strong leader in the rival camp, that is Mamata Banerjee, in this case. On the other hand, the same saffron party succeeded in Assam because here it has a strong state-level leader whom the party, without taking any name, projected as the chief ministerial face. Here the Congress-led Mahajot had no leader of the same standing.
So if Mamata Banerjee was there in West Bengal to cancel out the efforts of polarisation, there was none in Assam. By that logic the BJP victory in Assam can be largely attributed to the presence of Sarma or even for that matter Sarbananda Sonowal and not to Modi-Shah duo who failed badly in West Bengal.
Besides, the absence of any towering opposition figure facilitated the victory in Assam. The BJP succeeded in its propaganda that the Congress-led Mahajot (Grand Alliance) would make Badruddin Ajmal, the leader of All India United Democratic Front, the Chief Minister of Assam after the victory only because the Congress failed to name any chief ministerial candidate of its own. Had there been any such leader, or the former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi alive, the saffron party would not have succeeded so easily in its strategy. In West Bengal the same saffron camp left no stone unturned to divide the society but the presence of Mamata foiled all the plans. Here all the bigwigs of the BJP now appear to be ordinary political figures.
In the same way the Congress-led United Democratic Front in Kerala paid the price because it failed to project any chief ministerial candidate. This is notwithstanding the fact that in the 2019 Lok Sabha election the Congress won 19 out of the 20 seats.
The extensive campaign by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi did not yield results. Thus, the Left Democratic Front under the leadership of Pinarayi Vijayan broke over four decades old tradition of change of government after every five years.
In Tamil Nadu too the DMK-Congress-Left alliance could manage a stunning victory over the AIADMK-BJP-PMK combination because the former could project the leadership of M K Stalin.
Chief Minister E Palaniswami did manage to cover a lot of ground but he could not emerge as a successor of former party supremo J Jayalalithaa. Perhaps he would take some more time to reach that stature. At the same time, his alliance with the BJP backfired as there is no/little scope for cow-belt like politics in Tamil Nadu. Thus, both here as well as in West Bengal, the regional sentiment prevailed over the BJP brand of nationalism.
Thus, in a matter of few weeks the defeats coupled with the huge surge in COVID-19 have reduced the BJP into an ordinary outfit not in a position to get rid of the opposition parties.
In all these months former Congress president Rahul Gandhi did show some signs of maturity, yet he has failed to emerge as a good politician. He is still reluctant to take over the responsibility of the party leadership and everything is going on in a stop-gap way. The party paid the price.
But the biggest concern is for the BJP as early next year Assembly elections are due in several states, most importantly in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand. The farmers’ movement has already weakened the party in most of the states of North India. It is feared that the pandemic may drive the proverbial last nail in its coffin.