There can be no doubt any more than the BJP is indisputably the principal and most formidable political force in the country. It still doesn't straddle all over India like the Colossus like Congress did in the 1950s and 1960s (It probably never will). But it is the number one party in India. The victory in Assam opens the gateway to the Northeast. It has managed to open its account in Kerala, a historic debut for a party that has always been an insignificant bit player in the state. It might get a seat in Tamil Nadu and more than a handful in West Bengal. With these assembly election results, it has finally displaced the Congers as the party to beat.
Look at the map of India and the dominance of the BJP becomes clear. It runs a coalition government with the PDP in Jammu & Kashmir; something even diehard BJP supporters could,not have dreamt of before 2014. Till 2014, it was an insignificant minor player in Haryana. Now it rules the state with a majority of its own. It was the junior partner of the Shiv Sena for decades in Maharashtra. It has come within striking distance of a simple majority there and can afford to shrug off the periodic tantrums and threats thrown by Shiv Sena.
It has consolidated its dominance in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. It is almost certain to defeat Congress in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in 2017 and Karnataka in 2018. It was dealt a humiliating defeat by Arvind Kejriwal and AAP in Delhi in February, 2015. Yet,mint retained its vote share of more than 33 per cent. It lost badly in Bihar in November, 2015. Yet, it is the largest party in the state in terms of vote share. Back in the 70s and 80s, the principal aim of regional parties was to defeat the Congress and Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi. Today, regional parties are busy drawing up strategies to defeat the BJP and Narendra Modi. Whether it is Nitish Kumar or Lalu Yadav or Mayawati or Arvind Kejriwal, the clarion call is to take on Modi. That in itself says a lot about the dominance of the Congress.
But beyond this noise, these assembly elections reveal a hard nosed BJP strategy for 2019 if you delve deeper. In 2014, the BJP won 282 seats on its own. Out of this tally, a massive chunk of 71 came from Uttar Pradesh. The BJP won all 26 seats in Gujarat and all 25 in Rajasthan. It virtually swept Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and won a hefty 32 out of 40 seats in Bihar along with allies. The party won all four seats in Himachal and all five in Uttarakhand. Common sense says that such a phenomenal performance cannot be repeated by the BJP. In fact,mint would be safe to say that the BJP and the NDA would lose at least 40 seats from these seats in 2019. How will it make up for this loss?
This is where these elections matter. In West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the BJP won a sum total of four out of 102 seats. It won just one out 21 seats on offer in Odisha. And it was a marginal fringe player in Andhra and Telengana in alliance with the TDP led by Chandrababu Naidu. The BJP game plan is to ensure that its seat tally sees a massive increase from these states in 2019. The BJP seems to banking in the fact that voters behave differently during Lok Sabha elections as compared to assembly elections. If Modi has any hope of ensuring that the BJP crosses the 250 mark in 2019 and the NDA gets a comfortable majority, these states must deliver. Otherwise, the best case scenario for the party would be leading a fractious coalition government of the NDA with the BJP so far short of a majority that regional parties can play cat and mouse games with it.
Even Nostradamus will find it difficult to predict whether this BJP strategy for 2019 will work or not.
