BJP’s Spectacular Victory in UP, Uttarakhand, On Course in Goa, Manipur, AAP Sweeps Punjab, Congress Shrinks Further
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, March 10: The BJP recorded a spectacular victory in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh and was also seemed on mark to form the government in the three other states that went to the polls while the Aam Aadmi Party expanding from Delhi swept the elections in Punjab as the Congress footprint kept shrinking continuing the history of humiliating defeats in election after election.
Even though the official results were available for a very few seats till Thursday evening, the trend available showed that the BJP was on course to capture at least 266 seats in the 403 member UP Assembly leaving the main challenger the Samajwadi Party way behind at 132 while the Congress may come down to a tally of just two seats, down from seven it won in 2017, but better than the Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party which may end up with a token presence of only one seat. This will be the first time since 1985 that the ruling party has been retained in the office in UP.
As the Congress faced decimation in Punjab it was ruling in the last five years, the AAP filled the void keeping out the BJP which hoped to perform better in alliance with the former Congress chief minister Amarinder Singh. But Singh himself was among the number of top leaders of various parties including the Congress who suffered individual losses as the AAP almost single-handedly threw out challenges of all the political parties going up to score 92 seats in the 117-member House conceding only 18 seats to the Congress, the second highest in the House. The Congress outgoing chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi is likely to be defeated at both the seats he was contesting and so was the party’s state unit chief Navjot Singh Siddhu, whose frequent tantrums is considered to be one of the major reasons for the Congress party’s worst showing in the state.
The Congress, which expected to perform well in Uttarakhand and even the exit polls put it at giving a close fight to the ruling BJP, again tumbled far behind the majority mark and is likely to end up with only 22 seats in the 70-member Assembly with the BJP scaling up to comfortable majority of 48 seats with no other party including the AAP even opening their accounts in the state. However, the party’s sitting chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami was facing defeat in his constituency.
Both in Goa and Manipur, the BJP is likely to come close to the majority mark, but may fall short by one or two seats to form a government of its own. But the party is confident of securing the support of the local parties or the independents to finally form the government. In both the states, the Congress and all other parties have fallen far behind to make even an effort to form a government leaving the ground clear for the BJP.
The results of the five assembly elections are a further consolidation of the momentous changes in Indian politics over the last decade. The results in UP are a spectacular win for the BJP, consolidating its power and ideological hegemony over Indian politics. It sends a plain and simple message: Politics, in the end, is a game of competitive credibility and the BJP simply has no competition. The BJP has transformed the nature of politics in ways to which the Opposition has no answer. The first is a commitment to a generative conception of politics. The sense that the BJP has a deep social base, especially amongst women and lower castes, completely belies the identity determinism that has for so long characterised Indian politics.
On the AAP’s victory in Punjab, its neighbouring state Haryana, which share a number of common problems with the state, is feeling the pinch. The Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar said water and pollution issues would rise as AAP will be neighbours in Delhi and Punjab. He said Congress’s presence is still more than AAP even as people are losing interest in Congress’s ideology. “There’s a conflict between Punjab-Haryana for the water issue and between Delhi-Haryana for water supply. We’ll see how they rule,” Khattar said.
The Former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat, who was hoping to return to power, acknowledged that Congress’s campaign strategy was insufficient and efforts were a little less to win over the public. Expressing surprise over people’s continued support for BJP, Rawat said he can’t understand people saying ‘BJP zindabaad’ despite massive inflation.
The Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said the results of five states have come against the expectations of the party but “we accept that we failed to get the blessings of the people.” Sonia Gandhi has decided to convene Congress Working Committee meeting soon to introspect the results, he said.
The former Congress president Rahul Gandhi “humbly” accepted the people’s verdict as the party lost Punjab to the AAP and failed to gain ground in other states.
“Humbly accept the people’s verdict. Best wishes to those who have won the mandate. My gratitude to all Congress workers and volunteers for their hard work and dedication. We will learn from this and keep working for the interests of the people of India,” he wrote on Twitter.
Addressing a gathering after a sweep in Punjab, Delhi chief minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal said the results showed that he was not a terrorist as claimed by his rivals. “’Punjab waalo tussi kamaal kar ditta‘, we all love you, Punjab. The results are a massive ‘Inquilaab’, big seats have shaken up,” he said.
The Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal said his party accepts the mandate given by voters of Punjab with ‘total humility’. Congratulating AAP and Bhagwant Mann, Badal said he is sure they “will live up to people’s expectations.”
Mann, who is set to become the new Punjab chief minister, repeated AAP’s pre-poll promise that there would be no picture of chief ministers in government offices. “Only picture of Saheed Bhagat Singh and Baba Saheb Ambedkar will be in offices. I will take oath in Khatkar Kalan, the birthplace of Bhagat Singh, instead of taking oath in Raj Bhawan,” he said.
The Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the assembly election results were an endorsement of a new type of governance and politics. The minister of state for electronics IT, skill development & entrepreneurship, said in a statement that people of UP voted for the politics of development, politics of prosperity, politics of the kind that the state hasn’t seen for several decades and therefore this resounding mandate.
“This is the vote that is pro incumbency and it is pro good governance, pro focus on executing public schemes without corruption, pro law & order and safety for all citizens of UP and absolutely dismantling six decades of this dynasty, corrupt, mafia, intermediatory politics that has been the signature of the Congress and Samajwadi Party and so I think this is a very defining moment for the Indian democracy,” he added.
