Five-state assembly polls: Is the BJP as unshakeable as believed to be?

With the country just a few months away from the next Lok Sabha elections, the Congress party losing in all but Telangana in a five-state assembly poll would make anyone believe that the BJP is all set for a third straight term. But, was the Congress performance in the November 2023 five-state assembly polls really that bad? Let’s see.

If one were to merely go by vote share of the Congress in each of these states, the grand old party has actually lost at least two of the three Hindi-heartland states by just a whisker, and that too without the mega INDIA alliance behind it.

Among the five states, clear verdicts have been delivered by voters in just Madhya Pradesh as far as the Congress and BJP are concerned.

In MP, BJP has wrapped up a dizzying 163 of the 230 assembly constituencies with the Congress winning just 66 of the seats and the Rajasthan-based Bharat Adivasi Party winning one seat. However, if you look at the vote share garnered by each of the parties, BJP has got a whopping 48.55 per cent votes (almost one in two voters) but the Congress hasn’t performed too bad either and has managed 40.40 per cent of the total votes cast.  A vote share difference of just eight per cent especially after the party suffered a major setback with Jyotiraditya Scindia no longer in the Congress camp cannot be considered so bad after all. The only other party to get more than one per cent of the votes share in MP was the BSP with 3.4 per cent vote share.

In all other states, the difference in vote share between winners and losers was just around three to four per cent, even lesser. In Rajasthan, the other big state where BJP and Congress have direct rivalry, the BJP’s vote share is 41.69 per cent while the Congress has got 39.53 per cent of the total votes polled. Though the BJP has won 115 of the 199 seats comfortably leaving just 69 seats for the Congress, the number of votes polled for the Congress obviously reveals a different story. Besides, over 11 per cent of the votes have been eaten by independents and other smaller parties, which might not go that way in a Lok Sabha election especially when a mega alliance comes into play.

 In Chhattisgarh too, the BJP has got 46.27 per cent of the vote share while Congress has managed 42.23 per cent leaving very little votes for all other parties while in Mizoram, both the Congress and BJP haven’t managed to make a dent in the vote share of regional parties like Zoram People’s Movement (37.86 per cent) and the Mizo National Front (35.10 per cent). However, the Congress got 20.82 per cent votes while BJP managed just a little over five percent although the party won two seats against Congress’s sole victory in Lawntglai West.

Even in terms of the total votes polled in all these five states, the Congress has managed to get 4.91 crore votes against BJP’s 4.82 crore votes.

Similarly, in Telangana the Congress managed to get 64 of the 119 seats but has got only two per cent more votes than K. Chandrashekar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samiti, that too after the later completed two full terms but is clearly ahead of its national rival BJP, which managed to secure only 13.90 per cent of the total votes polled.

Even in terms of the total votes polled in these five states, the Congress has managed to get 4.91 crore votes against BJP’s 4.82 crore votes.

While it might be foolish to interpret these numbers might for a state-wise insight as local politics play a major role in each constituency of every state and might offer a better explanation on how votes have been split, the larger message for the Congress and rest of the opposition is that a really large number of people in this country still believe in a non-BJP government.

The Congress and the rest of the INDIA alliance, if they intend to prevent a saffron march to the Parliament this time, should work on a manifesto that will clearly spell out what difference they tend to bring to the country as well as to the common citizen if voted to power.

The Congress and the rest of the INDIA alliance, if they intend to prevent a saffron march to the Parliament this time, should work on a manifesto that will clearly spell out what difference they intend to make to the country as well as to the common citizen if voted to power.

Unless the Indian voter is convinced that the INDIA alliance can bring about a change for the better, they have no reason to vote out the BJP as we have clearly seen that branding the BJP as a communal party and preaching secularism doesn’t translate into votes. To achieve something tangible, the INDIA alliance needs to come up with a better promise than what BJP offers and spell it out with clarity.