BJP Full Steam Ahead

By: Asad Mirza

It is close to two months now, since the election results were declared, yet the Opposition parties seem to have gone into a limbo, seemingly not recovered from the shock defeat in the elections.

However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which got a landslide victory in the elections, is not sitting idle but preparing for the forthcoming Assembly elections in three states—Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana—with full steam, whereas the Opposition parties in these states are yet to recover from the shock at the recent defeat and seem to be in a complete disarray.

The Assembly elections are scheduled to be held around October-November this year in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana. In all these states the BJP is already in power. Soon after the results of the Lok Sabha elections, BJP national president Amit Shah held a meeting of the leaders from the three states to chalk out the strategy for the Assembly elections. While the party has a clear leader as well as the alliance very much in place in these states, the Congress and other Opposition parties are yet to work out the same and also the strategy, although the elections are only three-four months away.

JP Nadda was swiftly appointed as BJP’s working president till the time a full-time, new president is appointed, in order to ensure that the organisational work does not suffer.

In Maharashtra, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance deal has already been sealed. The two major parties of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will contest an equal number of seats after the smaller allies like the Republican Party of India (RPI) and Rashtriya Samaj Paksha are accommodated. However, which party will get the post of chief minister, in case the coalition wins, is yet to be worked out.

However, talks between the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress in Maharashtra are facing hurdles as the NCP is seeking a larger number of seats for the Assembly elections to be held later this year in the state.

The NCP and Congress are yet to break the deadlock as the NCP is demanding a larger share of seats out of total 288 Assembly seats, especially in Pune where it wants to contest on all the eight seats, while the Congress is firm on its demand for an equal distribution of seats.

What has added to the woes in the Opposition camp is that there is no clarity as to who will succeed Ashok Chavan, who resigned from the post of state Congress president. The NCP is in a Catch-22 situation, as it does not know with whom to negotiate in Congress. The Congress and the NCP had contested the October 2014 Assembly elections separately after sharing power for 15 years in a row in Maharashtra. The Congress and NCP had contested 287 and 278 seats respectively of the total 288 Assembly segments. The Congress could win 42 seats, while the NCP 41. In the recent Lok Sabha polls, the Congress could get only one seat, while the NCP got four.

In Jharkhand, where the BJP won 11 out of 13 Lok Sabha seats it contested (one seat went to its alliance partner All Jharkhand Students’ Union), it has set in motion the membership drive. Chief Minister Raghubar Das launched the drive from Jamshedpur in order to strengthen the party’s network. At present, there are over 25 lakh members in the state. The state unit aims to increase this number to 50 lakh before the state Assembly elections.

The Opposition grand alliance in the state consisting of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), is in a disarray. It was earlier decided that three parties would contest as alliance partners, headed by Congress, while the Assembly elections would be contested under the leadership of JMM and that its leader Hemant Soren would be the chief ministerial candidate.

However, with the Congress facing existential crisis following the resignation of Rahul Gandhi from the post of president and RJD witnessing the first split in Jharkhand, the entire game plan, prepared before the Lok Sabha elections, has gone awry. RJD’s state unit chief Gautam Sagar Rana, along with other party members, has formed RJD (Loktantrik) in Jharkhand. The Congress state unit is divided as one group is demanding replacing president Ajay Kumar.

Similar is the case with Haryana where the BJP won all the 10 seats in the state in the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress’ state unit is grappling with infighting and factionalism.

On the other hand, BJP president and Union Home Minister Amit Shah has set his eyes on capturing political power in Telangana by the next Assembly elections in 2023. Shah chose to launch the BJP’s membership drive from Hyderabad recently. Among the five southern states, Shah appeared to have made Telangana as his next target to come to power.

Addressing a gathering of party cadre near the Shamshabad International Airport here, Shah told his leaders to leave no stones unturned to unseat the TRS government which has already been discarded by the people. Shah reminded his party leaders that Chief Minister KCR, who won 88 out of 119 Assembly seats in December, could only win 9 out of 17 MPs. BJP won four MPs and Congress three and MIM got one.

BJP’s surprise win in Nizamabad, where it defeated Kavitha, sitting TRS MP and daughter of CM KCR, and Karimnagar, where it trounced senior TRS MP B. Vinod Kumar, along with Secunderabad and Adilabad seats has definitely buoyed the leadership. In acknowledgement of this show, Prime Minister Narendra Modi rewarded Telangana by making Secunderabad MP G. Kishan Reddy as MoS for Home in his ministry.

BJP’s strategy to expand its base in Telangana is based on polarisation of Hindu votes as the ruling TRS is glued to Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM which is a Muslim-dominated party in Hyderabad city as well as several other districts in the state. BJP believes that the same formula had helped it win the Adilabad MP seat where Muslims are of around 22% of the population.

The CM, in a recent meeting with TRS leaders, is learnt to have commented that they can just ignore BJP in Telangana as it is a marginal force here.

KCR’s confident comes from the fact that the BJP, which won four MPs in April, couldn’t win even one per cent of the seats in the local bodies elections held within fortnight. BJP is not in a position to put up a fight in the coming municipal elections also. KCR thinks that BJP won the four MPs purely based on local conditions and that they cannot pose a bigger threat to him anytime soon.

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Asad Mirza is a Sr journalist based in New Delhi. In his career spanning more than 20 years, he was also associated with BBC Urdu Service and Khaleej Times of Dubai. He writes on Muslims, educational and international affairs issues. Email: asad.mirza.nd@gmail.com