The Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is continuing its dream run of electoral victories, wresting states after states from the opposition. The principal opposition party, the Congress, also continued its horror run in electoral politics as Tuesday’s results of assembly polls in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir show.
After winning Haryana on its own steam and forming its own government in Maharashtra, both first time happenings, the BJP on Tuesday added one more state to its kitty: Jharkhand. For the first time, the BJP will be heading its own government with an almost clear majority in Jharkhand. “Almost” because the BJP won 37 seats on its own in the 81-seat assembly while its new ally All Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU) won five; thus together the two allies have one seat more than the magic number of 41. This is a big achievement considering that since Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar and made an independent state by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 2000, no party ever won a majority in this state. Jharkhand has had a track record of political instability with its 14-year-old history being pock-marked by nine different governments and two terms of Central rule.
Yet another first time happening in Jharkhand is that the predominantly tribal state will soon have a non-tribal as chief minister, the most likely chief ministerial candidate being Raghubar Das, 59, a backward caste leader of the BJP. Important national fallout of Jharkhand polls result would be that it will provide more political heft to Prime Minister Modi in giving the much-needed fillip to mining projects in this resource-rich state to tackle energy shortages more comprehensively. The story of Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections is a bit different. Election results in J&K have thrown up a fractured mandate with no single party having the requisite 44 seats on its own to form a government. This will inevitably lead to protracted negotiations as new political equations are made.
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of former Union Home Minister and former J&K Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed emerged as the single largest party with 28 seats in the 87-member assembly but far short of a clear majority.
The BJP with 25 seats is close behind the PDP. But in terms of vote share the BJP has emerged as the most voted party with a vote share of almost 24 percent as compared to the PDP’s vote share of about 22 percent.
What is even more creditable for the BJP is not just its best-ever performance in India’s only Muslim-majority state but also the little talked about fact that in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley BJP polled more votes than the Congress in several constituencies. However, the bigger political that has emerged from the election results of Jharkhand and J&K is that despite his winning streak, Modi is not invincible after all and it is all about the opposition making the right alliances at the right time.
In Jharkhand, the Congress entered the assembly elections by breaking off its alliance with the regional satrap Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). Both lost to the BJP with the JMM and the Congress winning 19 and six seats each as against the BJP’s 37. The Congress dumped the JMM in favor of a tie up with Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United and Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal, neither of which could win a single seat. Both Kumar and Yadav may be big leaders in the contiguous state of Bihar but in Jharkhand they are irrelevant and the JMM is a far bigger political force. This is what the Jharkhand results have just shown. In Jammu and Kashmir, the Congress contested elections independent of National Conference, though the two parties ran the state government for last six years together. National Conference and Congress won 15 and 12 seats respectively.
The story could have been drastically different if the state leadership of NC and Congress were to contest elections together as allies to take on Modi. Clearly, the non-BJP parties have not learnt from their mistakes in Maharashtra where the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) severed their alliance and contested elections against one another. The moral of the story is this. The Modi juggernaut is stoppable but only if the opposition makes the right alliances. Nothing is better demonstrated than the fact that in the April-May general elections the BJP had led in 58 assembly segments in Jharkhand but in the state assembly polls less than seven months later the BJP managed to win only 37 seats.
The opposition is citing this fact to prove that the Modi wave is waning. This can be a valid political point but all that matters is who wins and who loses. The fact is that Modi has emerged politically stronger after elections in four states and shown that his landslide victory in general elections seven months ago was not a freak.
The Indian opposition parties will do well to remember a quotable quote made famous by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping: “I don’t mind if my cat is black as long as it catches rat.” In the Indian political context, it would mean that an ideology or an alliance does not matter as long as it works.
