Assembly Election Results 2023: Bucking The Trend

Madhya Pradesh will be a walkover for the Congress. Chhattisgarh will be tougher. Rajasthan will be a tight fight. The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) may just hold on to Telangana. The MNF will be back in Mizoram. The poll pundits and punters were narrating these tales even hours before the results of the recently-held state elections were announced. The voters, of course, had a mind of their own.

After four terms in power in Madhya Pradesh—with a brief hiatus when Kamal Nath of the Congress was CM—the BJP has stormed back with 163 seats, with a yawning seven per cent-plus difference in vote share between the two parties. The results in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh too were hardly close, though the vote share difference between the BJP and the Congress was in the range of between two and four per cent. It was a decisive vote for the Congress in Telangana and the new party Zoram People’s Movement shocked everyone in Mizoram.

Post-election analysis is always easier. Now there is a chorus that Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s schemes, especially aimed at women like Ladli Behana Yojna, got him back to power. But then why did K Chandrashekar Rao lose despite numerous policies which seemed to be working on the ground? In Telangana, anti-incumbency was attributed as the main factor. But why not in Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP has been power for double the number of years? In this issue, we take a detailed look at the welfare schemes of various political parties and try to find out why some click with the voters and others don’t. Do welfare schemes aimed purely for electoral gains actually benefit the targeted groups?

With the party at the forefront of the Telangana movement, the BRS, now a distant second, is it the end of the road for smaller, regional parties? Journalist and author Ashutosh deciphers the BJP juggernaut, how and why it rolls, bludgeoning everything on its way.

(This appeared in the print as 'Bucking The Trend')