In recent years, questions have been raised about the fate of secularism in India with the political dominance of the BJP and its brand of nationalism. While the Congress used this narrative to attack the BJP in its campaigns, something more seemed to have resonated with the public, which favoured the saffron party in three major states.
On December 3, as votes were being counted in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana, it became clear that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has renewed its stronghold in the Hindi heartland. In Madhya Pradesh, the party exceeded its own expectations by performing better than it has done in the last 15 years. In Chhattisgarh, the Congress was left stunned after the BJP’s win, while in Rajasthan, the anti-incumbency factor played in favour of the saffron party.
At the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, following the party’s emphatic win in the assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told party workers that the “hat-trick victories have given the guarantee for the 2024 hat-trick,” sounding the bugle for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
In Telangana, where the Congress ousted the Bharat Rashtriya Samithi (BRS) government, the BJP managed to make its presence felt as its vote share went up from 7 to 14 per cent. The party also snatched the Kamareddy seat, a key constituency where the BJP’s Katipally Venkata Ramana Reddy trounced Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao as well as state Congress Chief Revanth Reddy.
While the poll analysis pundits predicted a close fight between the BJP and Congress, one of the major factors that led to the BJP’s sweep across Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh was the growing Hindutva narrative in the Hindi heartland, coupled with welfare politics. In recent years, questions have been raised about the fate of secularism in India with the political dominance of the BJP and its brand of nationalism. The Congress used this narrative in its campaigns for the assembly elections, slamming the BJP for indulging in polarisation and appeasement politics.
However, something more seemed to have resonated with the public, which favoured the saffron party in three major states, boosting the BJP’s confidence for the 2024 general elections.
BJP leaders have hailed the party’s victories as a result of people's "unwavering" faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a rejection of Congress' "hollow promises."
The BJP had taken the gambit of not projecting any chief ministerial face and built its campaign around grander narratives involving the Modi government's performance despite misgivings in some quarters, as the five state polls came months after the Karnataka elections where a similar strategy had come unstuck.
The party not only amplified its pitch for state-level development and upliftment but also that around the prime minister in its campaign with all the manifestoes highlighting his guarantees. Modi crisscrossed the poll-bound states, except for Mizoram, banking on his popular support while assuring to deliver on the welfare and development promises.
Wooing women voters, who account for nearly half of the population, has been an emerging trend in elections over the past few years. If there is one scheme that completely defied the exit poll predictions this time, it was the Ladli Behna Yojana in Madhya Pradesh. This Yojana was proof that women voters in MP—constituting 40 per cent of the state’s population—chose the BJP’s promises over that of the Congress. Speaking to Outlook, a woman in her 20s said that the Rs 1250 that she received every month was a respite. “Mama has taken care of his sisters,” she said. ‘Mama’ Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the incumbent chief minister, himself had admitted ahead of the results that women voters would play a crucial role in favour of the BJP.
The Congress, too, had announced several welfare schemes. But as Virendra Singh Rathode, senior journalist from Western MP, said, “The BJP has put forth right counters for each and every Congress scheme. From subsidy in LPG to the increase in Minimum Support Price (MSP), the BJP found its ways.”
In Chhattisgarh, too, just days ahead of polling day, the BJP announced a slew of promises in its manifesto. These included schemes to provide Rs 12,000 every year to married women, gas connections at Rs 500, Rs 18 lakh under the PM housing scheme, and up to Rs 10 lakh claims under Ayushman Bharat Yojana. It promised to purchase tendu patta at Rs 5,500 per standard bag and provide a bonus of Rs 4500 for additional collection, among other promises.
The Congress, which was already combating BJP’s corruption charges, was outperformed by the BJP’s welfare tactics, backed by “Modi ki guarantee”.
For Rajasthan, on the other hand, this was an expected trend. Voters in the western state have a tradition of changing the government every five years—from Vasundhara Raje replacing Ashok Gehlot in 2003 to Gehlot coming back to power in 2008, to Raje again unseating Gehlot in 2013 and Gehlot winning in 2018 again. The Congress, while attempting to fight this trend, failed, and BJP’s series of promises for women voters expedited its victory.
In the Karnataka elections, the Congress' victory had a great deal to do with how the grassroots-level leadership and the Congress cadre united against the BJP under the local leadership. A similar observation was also made regarding the Telangana results this time, where Revanth Reddy’s leadership at the state level clearly gave the grand old party an edge.
The Congress should have stuck to this game plan in other states, too. The reason the BJP was yet again able to project Modi as a leader with worthy credentials across Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh was because of its political machine that was miles ahead of its competition in terms of organisational foundation and material resources, as Manoj Kumar Jha wrote in Outlook’s 'Cadre Blockchain' (April 25, 2022 issue).
The BJP’s mainstay has been its cadre, the “footsoldiers of political parties”, and it has spent time and resources to build and rebuild the organisation at the grassroots-level, infuse fresh blood, deliver nuanced messages of nati¬onalism, and consolidate its support base and strengthen the party’s organisational might across regions.
With the latest wins, the BJP is now in power in most of north and west India, two regions which have powered its back-to-back Lok Sabha victories in 2014 and 2019. The Congress, which has regained a foothold in south India, has much to introspect about ahead of the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections.