Moreover, the polls, particularly in Maharashtra, will also have a bearing on the cohesiveness within the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
Momentum post-Haryana
In the Haryana assembly elections, which concluded on 8 October, the BJP won 48 of the state’s 90 seats, while the Congress bagged 37. In J&K, of the 90 assembly seats, the National Conference won 42 seats, the Congress 6, and the BJP 29.
In the Lok Sabha polls, held in June this year, the BJP lost ground in Haryana and Maharashtra as well as Jharkhand.
The party won only five of Haryana’s 10 seats, ceding the rest to the Congress, compared to 2019 when it swept all 10. In Maharashtra, the BJP won just nine of the 28 seats it contested, as against winning 23 of the 25 seats it contested in 2019. The BJP won eight of the 13 seats it contested in Jharkhand, down from the 11 seats in 2019.
The party surprised many by pulling its best-ever victory in Haryana on the back of a lacklustre Lok Sabha result, boosting its morale as well as perception. A similar win in Maharashtra and Jharkhand will further strengthen that perception.
A defeat in the assembly elections in Maharashtra, which sends the second-highest num MPs to the Parliament at 48 and has 288 assembly seats, will severely hurt the party.
BJP vs regional parties
In several pockets of the country, such as West Bengal, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, while the BJP has been able to counter the Congress, it has not been able to overpower the might of regional parties.
In Haryana, however, the regional parties were almost wiped out with the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) winning just two seats and former deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) failing even to open its account.
In Maharashtra, the BJP’s alliance with the undivided Shiv Sena splintered, first in 2014, and then with a finality in 2019—mainly due to its ambition to overpower the regional party.
In 2014, the BJP walked out of the alliance, asking for a higher share of seats to contest, which the undivided Shiv Sena was not willing to cede. In 2019, the Shiv Sena under Uddhav Thackeray walked out because the BJP, which had nearly double the number of seats as compared to its regional ally, was not willing to share the chief ministership for half the term.
Cut to 2022, when Eknath Shinde rebelled against the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and formed a government with the BJP, the state’s political realities prompted the BJP to make Shinde the CM despite having more MLAs.
In Maharashtra, though, there are four main regional parties that the BJP has to compete with now—two internally within the Mahayuti alliance, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and two on the rival side, the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar). Other than these, there are smaller regional parties, too, such as the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi.
In Jharkhand, the BJP has to rely on allies such as the All Jharkhand Students Union, which has a large influence on rural and tribal areas. In the Lok Sabha election, the BJP had lost all the five seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes in Jharkhand to the INDIA bloc.
The BJP’s performance in Maharashtra and Jharkhand will give a glimpse of to what extent the party is able to battle regional outfits.
The Modi card
Prime Minister Narendra Modi barely campaigned in Haryana, addressing only four rallies, as compared with 10 in 2014 and six in 2019, with the party seeming to rely more on the local party machinery it had established in the state rather than its central leadership. But, in Maharashtra as well as Jharkhand, Modi continues to be the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)’s face.
Modi has already visited Jharkhand twice in less than a month, inaugurating multiple development projects, especially with an eye on the tribal vote.
Earlier this month, Modi also kicked off theMahayuti’s campaign in Maharashtra, starting his tour with a visit to Washim district in Vidarbha, a BJP bastion where the party’s hold had significantly loosened in the Lok Sabha polls. Modi also addressed a rally from CM Shinde’s bastion of Thane and inaugurated multiple development projects.
So, as such, the assembly results will also be a reflection of Modi’s popularity in the two states.
Verdict on BJP’s strategy
In 2014, in Maharashtra and Haryana as well as Jharkhand, the BJP appointed leaders from the non-dominant castes, namely, Devendra Fadnavis (a Brahmin), Manohar Lal Khattar (a non-Jat), and Raghubar Das (a non-tribal).
The party leadership was miffed with Fadnavis after the party could not form a government in Maharashtra in 2019 despite being the single largest party, though short of the halfway mark.
In 2022, when it came to power with the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, the BJP decided to sidestep Fadnavis, appointing Shinde, a Maratha, as the CM. Moreover, Fadnavis was ordered to take the office of deputy CM at a time when he had already announced that he wanted to stay out of the government. Fadnavis, however, also remains the face of the BJP in Maharashtra.
The BJP benefited from Shinde’s rebellion and, when forming the government, called it a “natural ideological alliance”. A year later, however, it also joined hands with its former political and ideological rival, Ajit Pawar, and the faction of the NCP he leads.
Party leaders have spoken in hushed tones about how the alliance with the Ajit Pawar-led NCP had, perhaps, hurt the BJP’s fortunes in the Lok Sabha elections.
In Jharkhand, the BJP in 2019 lost its hold on the tribal vote as well as the government, which prompted the party to bring back Babulal Marandi, Jharkhand’s first CM and a tribal leader. Marandi had drifted away from the BJP and launched his own Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) in 2006. Four years later, after the BJP’s 2019 loss in the state, Marandi merged his party with the BJP and eventually became the state BJP chief.
The BJP had attributed its loss in tribal seats in Jharkhand in the Lok Sabha polls to the INDIA bloc’s campaign alleging that the BJP would modify the Constitution if it won again at the Centre.
To bolster its tribal vote bank, the BJP also inducted Champai Soren, a former CM and former Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader, in August this year. The strategy of preferring leadership from non-dominant castes came full circle in Haryana as the non-Jat votes strongly rallied behind the BJP.
The verdict on its strategies in Maharashtra and Haryana is still out.
Cohesiveness of the INDIA bloc
When the Congress lost the Haryana polls, its own political allies became its biggest critics. The Congress did not fight the elections unitedly with its partners in the INDIA bloc.
An analysis of the poll verdict showed that had the alliance stayed together, the BJP would have fallen short of the majority mark of 46 seats. Congress allies such as the the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Aam Aadmi Party slammed the national party for its “overconfidence” in the state.
In Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the Congress is contesting the polls with its regional allies as part of the INDIA bloc.
While in Maharashtra, it is part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) with the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), in Jharkhand, the party is in an alliance with the JMM.
If the seat-sharing and power-sharing negotiations go smoothly and these alliances put up a strong performance in the two states, it will act as a glue for the larger INDIA bloc especially at a time when assembly elections such as those of Delhi and Bihar are coming up next year.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
Also Read: How Modi’s rally in Thane, a first as PM, stands to bolster Shinde’s position in Mahayuti
