The alliance of Congress, Shri Uddhav Thackeray and Shri Sharad Pawar i.e. Maha Vikas Aghadi is hopeful that based on the results of the Lok Sabha elections, it will win. But the result of the Lok Sabha elections was an exception. In that too, if we look at the vote figures, the BJP led alliance i.e. Mahayuti has got only three percent less votes than the Congress alliance. That is, the difference in votes is only three percent and due to technical reasons, the difference in seats has doubled.
Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had said in the election campaign of Haryana that Haryana will prove to be Madhya Pradesh for Congress. His words proved to be 100% correct. Just as Congress lost in Madhya Pradesh, similarly in Haryana, despite creating an atmosphere of victory and setting the narrative, Congress lost because it could neither understand the pro-incumbency nor opposition to the 10-year double engine government of Haryana. Could understand the undercurrent of. National Conference has won in Jammu and Kashmir also, Congress has lost badly. Its seats decreased from 12 to six and BJP’s increased from 25 to 29. In fact, most of the political analysts are ignoring the reality that only as an exception, an anti-incumbency atmosphere is being created against the governments of BJP and its allies. In most places, a wave of pro-incumbency i.e. support for power is being created, due to which NDA governments return to power again and again.
This can also be understood on the basis of statistics. If we look at the Center itself, it happened after 50 years that a government won for the third consecutive time. Shri Narendra Modi equaled Pandit Nehru’s record of becoming Prime Minister for three consecutive terms. In 1977, when Congress lost power for the first time, no party returned to power for the third consecutive time. That record was broken by Shri Narendra Modi. Similarly can be seen in many states. For the third consecutive time in Haryana, BJP formed the government with more majority and more votes. In 12 states i.e. Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Assam, Tripura, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Nagaland, BJP and its allies formed the government for two consecutive terms or more. In comparison, some regional parties have returned governments but Congress has not formed the government twice in a row in any state in the last 10 years. This means that wherever the Congress government is formed, within five years an anti-incumbency atmosphere is created against it and people defeat it. An interesting statistic is that barring an exception like Delhi, BJP has not been the main opposition party in any state for 10 consecutive years. That means, once it becomes the main opposition party, it returns to power within five years. Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh etc. are examples of this.
The purpose of revealing these two figures was to show that BJP has been the main opposition party in Jharkhand for five years and this time it is time for it to return to power there, whereas in Maharashtra there is a coalition government of BJP, against which there is no anti-incumbency atmosphere. No because generally there is no anti-incumbency against NDA governments. Therefore, BJP and its allies will form the government there for the third consecutive time. It needs to be kept in mind that even in 2019, BJP did not lose the elections. After running the government for five years i.e. from 2014 to 2019, when the BJP and Shiv Sena alliance went to the elections, it was being said that there was anti-incumbency and the NDA would lose the elections. But the opposite happened. NDA won 161 seats, of which BJP won 105 and Shiv Sena won 56 seats. Both of them together got more than 42 percent votes. But after the elections, Shri Uddhav Thackeray was adamant on ruling for two and a half years, due to which the alliance broke and Congress and NCP betrayed the mandate and formed the government with Shri Uddhav Thackeray. The people of Maharashtra will also take revenge for that betrayal this time.
The alliance of Congress, Shri Uddhav Thackeray and Shri Sharad Pawar i.e. Maha Vikas Aghadi is hopeful that based on the results of the Lok Sabha elections, it will win. But the result of the Lok Sabha elections was an exception. In that too, if we look at the vote figures, the BJP led alliance i.e. Mahayuti has got only three percent less votes than the Congress alliance. That is, the difference in votes is only three percent and due to technical reasons, the difference in seats has doubled. If we talk about statistics, BJP got only nine seats in the Lok Sabha, whereas last time it had got 23 seats. That means its 14 seats were reduced but its vote loss was only 1.66 percent. In 2019, BJP got 27.84 percent votes and in 2024 it got 26.18 percent votes. Keep in mind that BJP has maintained its vote percentage of 25 to 27 percent in the last four elections.
As far as Shiv Sena is concerned, the people of Maharashtra have also shown that the real Shiv Sena belongs to Shri Eknath Shinde. In the Lok Sabha elections, Shri Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena fought on 21 seats and won only nine, while Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena fought on 15 seats and won seven. Shinde’s Shiv Sena had a better strike rate than Thackeray’s. Shiv Sainik remained with him completely. Uddhav Thackeray got the votes of Congress and NCP, a major part of which is from his Muslim vote base. That is why it is not surprising that Shri Uddhav Thackeray and his party leaders are leaving the path of Hindutva of late Bala Saheb Thackeray and walking on the path of Muslim appeasement. As Union Home Minister Shri Amit Shah said that Shri Uddhav Thackeray is making Aurangzeb his hero in the company of Congress and NCP. So, whether appeasement politics is done by Uddhav Thackeray or Sharad Pawar or Congress, it will be of no use in Maharashtra. In Maharashtra, the BJP supported government of Shri Eknath Shinde has started giving one and a half thousand rupees per month to women under ‘Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana’. Under Ladla Bhai Scheme, youth are being given six to 10 thousand rupees per month. The central government has announced free medical treatment up to Rs 5 lakh for elderly people above 70 years of age under the Ayushman Bharat scheme. There has been an increase in MSP on Rabi crops for farmers. Integrated pension scheme has come. On the basis of all such positive schemes, BJP and its allies have created an undercurrent of support for the government.
On the other hand, people in Jharkhand are fed up with the corrupt and dynastic rule of JMM, Congress and RJD for five years. There, in the Lok Sabha elections, BJP lost three seats compared to the last time, but if we look at the assembly seats, it had won more than 50 seats. This means that if the BJP alliance performs as well as in the Lok Sabha elections, it will get more than 50 seats. Those who are analyzing Jharkhand on the basis of the results of 2019 assembly elections need to wear new glasses of understanding. Even in 2019, BJP did not lose. There was no anti-incumbency wave even after five years of rule. On the contrary, under the leadership of Shri Raghuvar Das, BJP’s vote increased by 2.11 percent, while JMM’s vote decreased by 1.71 percent. Despite this, JMM got more seats because BJP’s old alliance partner AJSU had contested the elections separately. It fielded candidates on 53 seats and got more than eight percent of the votes. This time the election is different from last time because AJSU with eight percent vote capital is with BJP and Shri Babulal Marandi with five and a half percent vote capital has returned to BJP. That means BJP has more than 13 percent votes in its account. At that time NDA’s vote in the Lok Sabha had reached 47 percent.
It is true that BJP could not win the tribal seats but it does not mean that tribals are against BJP. If BJP did not get the votes of the largest vote group i.e. tribals, then how would its vote percentage reach 47? BJP has made Jharkhand’s biggest tribal leader and development man Mr. Babulal Marandi the state president and has made him the tribal chief minister of both the neighboring states of Chhattisgarh and Odisha. It also needs to be kept in mind that the tribals in Jharkhand are facing an existential crisis. The population structure of tribal-dominated Jharkhand is changing due to Bangladeshi infiltration. The population of tribals is decreasing. There is a crisis of bread, daughter and soil. That is why the tribal community will get rid of those doing appeasement politics and will support BJP. Be it tribals or backward classes or Sadan or general caste people, everyone has faced some kind of difficulty during the five years of JMM, Congress and RJD rule. The entire tenure of the government has been full of allegations of corruption and looting. Just before the elections, the state government has opened the treasury and promised to provide many services and goods free of cost, but in this matter also the record of BJP is much better than other parties. (The author is Delhi-based Officer on Special Duty to Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang (Golay).) Opinions are personal.)