Is shrinking Lotus eclipsing BJP’s dream of Congress-mukt Bharat?

New Delhi: May 24, 2019 – was a day of jubilation at the BJP headquarters here with showers of fresh flowers, red carpets rolled out and ‘dhols’ going full blast after Modi 2.0 entered with a bang of an unprecedented mandate of 303 seats in the Lok Sabha.

But come December, and with the loss of Jharkhand on Monday, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s saffron hue appears to be on the wane.

The once blooming ‘Lotus’ has been shrinking at a steady pace across India. It all started last December when the BJP was wiped out in three states at one go — Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Then Maharashtra too slipped out of BJP’s hand in Autumn.

With winter in full swing, BJP has now lost Jharkhand.

It’s a legitimate question then: Is the “Congress-mukt Bharat” an idea whose time never came? Here’s looking at the 12 states where the question hangs heavy.

It all started with:

1. Punjab: The state that the Akali-BJP combine lost after ruling two consecutive terms. Captain Amarinder Singh, the giant killer as he is often referred to within the Punjab Congress, was allowed to take charge replacing Rahul Gandhi’s protege Partap Singh Bajwa, and the BJP’s rout began.

After exit polls showed new entrant Aam Aadmi Party doing well, the BJP trained its guns on AAP more than the Congress, in spite of knowing their primary contender was Congress.

Many in hushed tones, during the assembly polls, said that the state BJP IT Cell worked unilaterally against the AAP. The BJP was cut down to a single-digit — two in the 117-member Assembly, which is worse than in Delhi.

2. Chhattisgarh: Last December, the BJP’s 15-year-rule came to an abrupt end when the Congress dethroned Raman Singh of BJP from the Naxal-affected state. The Congress swept to power with a three-fourth majority on 68 seats in the 90-member Assembly.

The BJP was reduced to just 15 in the state. In spite of a triangular fight with Congress, Ajit Jogi-led Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC) and Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) combine in the fray, the BJP failed to get any benefit.

In the 2013 assembly polls, the BJP had won 49 seats. Congress’ Bhupesh Baghel rose to power after handing out a crushing defeat to Singh.

3. Rajasthan: This has been an interesting state for the BJP. In the 2014 general election, it won all of 25 seats. In 2019, the general election had 58.47 percent vote share in the state.

However, during the assembly elections, the electorate decided for a change. With 107 MLAs in the 200-member Assembly, the Congress returned to power.

Soon after, in a press conference, a confident Rahul Gandhi had said, “It’s the time for a change. A resurgent Congress and strongly united Opposition will make it very difficult for Modi and the BJP to win 2019 elections (to Lok Sabha).”

Although that dream of Rahul Gandhi wasn’t realized, Vasundhara Raje Scindia was replaced by Congress’s Ashok Gehlot.

4. Madhya Pradesh: The state took one of the longest times to count the final vote in the era of EVMs. The result left Shivraj Singh Chouhan disappointed. Unlike Raje, Chouhan was a very popular CM. But that wasn’t enough.

Congress’ Kamal Nath swept to power last December in spite of the intra-party contradictions. Like in Chhattisgarh, the Congress managed to form a government in the state after a long spell of 15 years, though with a wafer-thin majority.

Interestingly, again in 2019 general elections, which took place just a few months after the Assembly results, the BJP won 28 seats, including Guna, where senior Congressman Jyotiraditya Scindia lost by a big margin.

BJP General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, who hails from the state, credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s image for the comeback in the state in the general election.

That though could not take away the fact that BJP lost one of its key states.

5. Maharashtra: After an embarrassingly short stint of the BJP and a breakaway faction of the NCP, the Sena-led NCP-Congress-Shiv Sena claimed power at the Financial capital. The new equation was also a political statement by the former NDA ally to BJP that “no one is untouchable in politics” and its hardline Hindutva doesn’t make it untouchable either to the Congress and the NCP.

The BJP-Sena alliance fell apart, resulting in a month-long political uncertainty in the state.

The Sena walked out of the nearly three-decade-old alliance with the saffron party in early November. The apparent discord was over the 50:50 power-sharing formula as insisted upon by the Sena and a Sena CM for 2.5 years.

6. Jharkhand: The latest to join the bandwagon of non-BJP states is Jharkhand where five years of anti-incumbency and an unpopular Chief Minister proved costly for the “lotus”.

With few rounds of counting still remaining, the JMM-Cong-RJD alliance appears comfortably set to cross the majority mark of 42.

In the last election in 2014, a brazen BJP put out a non-tribal CM in a tribal-dominated state. That didn’t work out in 2019 when he seems all set to be defeated decisively by BJP rebel Saryu Roy who fought as an Independent from Jamshedpur East constituency.

One of the BJP’s slogans in the run-up to the 2014 general election was making India “Congress-mukt” (Free of Congress). Riding high on the volley of corruption angle against then UPA-2 and its top ministers, the BJP had made “Congress mukt Bharat” a household slogan.

Five years down the lane, that dream appears far away.

Even in states like Haryana where the ‘Lotus’ has come back to power, it is only after taking the support of the JJP and Independents.

In Bihar, Nitish Kumar’s JD-U is calling the shots. Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP, an NDA ally at the Centre, had decided to go it alone in Jharkhand. In most of the Northeastern states, it is the North-Eastern Democratic Alliance (NEDA), an umbrella alliance, is running the show.

Up ahead in 2020, with the start of a new decade, new challenges await the BJP. (IANS)

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