Assembly elections don’t foretell LS poll trends

THERE is great excitement in the media and political circles about next month’s Assembly elections, particularly in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, because there is a straight contest between the BJP and the Congress in these Hindi-heartland states. And the feverish expectation in the anti-BJP camp is that the results in the three state elections would be a fair indicator of what would happen in the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.

But this is an idle strain of speculation because the results of the Assembly polls in 2018 and the Lok Sabha election in 2019 were quite antithetical. In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress had edged past the BJP in the 2018 Assembly election, with 114 seats against 109. However, in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, the BJP had won 28 seats to the Congress’ one in the state.

A similar difference was witnessed in the other two states. In Rajasthan, the Congress had won 100 seats in the 2018 Assembly election against the BJP’s 73, but the former did not win a single seat in the Lok Sabha election in 2019, with the BJP bagging 24 and one going to the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, a constituent of the BJP-led NDA. In Chhattisgarh, the Congress had won 68 seats in the 2018 Assembly elections and the BJP only 15. But in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, the BJP got nine of the 11 seats and the Congress settled for two.

So, the divergences between the Assembly and parliamentary election outcomes are quite pronounced in these three states. It does not leave much room for speculation.

It is true that election statistics do not always hold good and there is a great possibility of a black swan event. But the electoral results do tell an interesting story of their own, and it is something about the Indian democracy. The people in these states made nuanced decisions. They had felt that the party good enough to govern in the state need not be the same as the one at the national level, and the one suited to rule the state need not be the one at the Centre. It also shows that the voters in these states had greater confidence in the state leaders of the Congress and they did not feel the same level of confidence in the party’s national leadership.

To a great extent, this is due to the greater credibility that Narendra Modi has enjoyed over Rahul Gandhi on the national stage, but this did not extend to the state. This should be a cautionary tale for both Modi and Rahul. The PM and his party have to accept that the BJP under Modi can be trusted with power at the Centre but not in some states. Similarly, Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan are acceptable to the people, but the same does not extend to the national leaders of the party. The Congress in Madhya Pradesh was a hotbed of rivalry between Jyotiraditya Scindia (who later switched over to the BJP) and Digvijay Singh. Kamal Nath was more of a replacement for Digvijay.

It is a matter of curiosity rather than irony that the Congress — and now the BJP has jumped on the bandwagon with the success of PM Modi — has believed that it is its national standing that had helped win elections at the local level.

It was the repute of Congress’ national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel that helped the party win elections in many parts of the country. This led to the belief that there was no need for local leadership and whoever the national leaders chose would be voted in at the state level. This was so for a short phase in 1971-72 when Indira Gandhi appeared to be the national mascot of the party. But it did not last.

And it has not worked for PM Modi and the BJP either. In the last nine years, the party has lost many Assembly elections despite his and his party’s attempts to project him as its mascot. And this became evident in the Himachal Pradesh polls of 2022 and the Karnataka elections held earlier this year. Modi had staked his personal standing in these two states in his campaign speeches, but the party had lost.

It was a chastened Modi who said at an election rally in Rajasthan that people should vote for the party’s symbol — the lotus — and not for individuals. This was his way of rationalising the absence of a chief-ministerial candidate of the party in the state. He had seen how ineffective was his earlier campaign slogan that ‘a vote for the BJP is a vote for him’. People in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka were not convinced by the Prime Minister’s catchline.

Rahul and the Congress played their cards well when the party campaign was spearheaded by the combined leadership of the party and there was no focus on him as the mascot.

This goes to show that the Indian polity is, willy-nilly, federal because of linguistic and geographical diversity, and it is difficult to impose political regimentation across the country. In Telangana, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), which has changed its name from Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), to show that it is not just a regional party, has to fight in the Assembly poll as a regional player, even as the Congress and the BJP, despite their claims to be national parties, have to oppose the BRS on local issues. In Mizoram, the ruling Mizo National Front is locked in a tussle with the Congress and the Zoram People’s Movement.

Indian politics functions at many levels. There is, of course, the national identity, but it is not always the determining factor. And one does not contradict the other. Surprisingly, it is the political pundits who miss the point, just like overzealous parties such as the BJP and the Congress, which want to ride the pan-India wave. The ordinary Indian voter and the ordinary Indian politician know the importance of local factors. That’s what Assembly elections are all about.