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BJP stunned : Analysis of the defeat

	May 17, 2004

Contrary to the expectations and predictions of a “hung parliament,” the final figures for the 14th Lok Sabha indicated an unambiguous mandate for the Congress and its pre-election allies. On its own the Congress has emerged as the largest single party, with 145. Along with the Left parties (62 seats), the Congress coalition (with 217 seats) is comfortably placed to cross the halfway mark of 272 in the new Lok Sabha.

The BJP, that was hoping till the last moment that it would only fall short of majority by 10 to 20 seats, was hit by a pro-Sonia storm. The defeat of many Ministers and the BJP’s failure to retain its position as the single largest party brought home the extent of the rebuff. Those who fell by the roadside included heavyweights from parties like Murli Manohar Joshi, Sahib Singh Verma, Shivraj Patil, Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha, Sharad Yadav, Jagmohan, I.D.Swami and Ram Naik.

Prominent winners include Vajpayee, Advani, George Fernandes, Kalyan Singh, Ms. Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, Pranab Mukherjee, Ajit Jogi, Chandra Shekhar, Ajit Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati, P.A. Sangma, Somnath Chatterjee, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, S. Bangarappa, Suresh Prabhu, and P. Chidambaram. Many film stars did better than veteran politicians. Thus Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Nirupam and Petroleum Minister ram Naik were trounced by actors Sunil Dutt and Govinda.

Vajpayee presided over, for the last time, a Cabinet meeting at which it was formally decided that the Council of Ministers should resign. Later, accompanied by the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, the Prime Minister drove to Rashtrapati Bhavan to hand in his resignation. Later, the Prime Minister addressed the nation and noted that “my party and alliance may have lost, but India has won.” It is not clear whether Vajpayee would like to be Leader of the Opposition or let his deputy L.K. Advani handle the day-today affairs in Parliament.

Struggling to come to terms with its humiliating defeat in the general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began soul searching but ruled out the need for any leaders to resign. Party leaders Pramod Mahajan and BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu told reporters that the party owned collective responsibility for its defeat, the reasons for which varied from state to state. “This is the time to review, analyse, introspect and move forward,” he said. “We are a party of ideology and collective responsibility. We do not believe in apportioning blame on any single leader.” “There is no need for anyone to resign assuming moral responsibility,” Naidu replied to a specific question addressed to Mahajan, the brain behind the ruling coalition’s e-campaign. Naidu said the BJP was steadfast in its opposition to a person of foreign origin assuming the top post in the country, an issue that has been rebuffed by the electorate.

Stating that all assessments about the party’s performance had gone wrong, a despondent Naidu admitted his vision was unfulfilled. The results were not expected by anybody - the media, political parties or even non-political outfits, he pointed out.

Observers have noted that the success of the Congress in the elections was as surprising as the stunning defeat of the BJP-led NDA which had little doubt on its ability to retain power under the leadership of A.B. Vajpayee. The BJP’s poor show in key states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and surprisingly even in Gujarat, offset the gains it made in Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan. One of the major reasons for the NDA debacle was the poor choice of allies in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu where the Telugu Desam and AIADMK were swept off by the strategic alliance worked out by the Congress-with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) in Andhra and DMK in Tamil Nadu. The minor consolation for the BJP was that in Orissa its partner Biju Janata Dal (BJD) led by Naveen Patnaik retained power, while Congress Chief Minister S.M. Krishna could not get majority in Karnataka and may have to settle for a possible alliance with his bitter critic and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda of Janata Dal (S). The voters sent home the hi-tech Chief Minister of Andhra, Chandrababu Naidu and voted in a Congress led alliance.

On hindsight it was clear that the BJP badly erred in advancing the elections which were only due in September/October, misjudging its victories in the assembly elections in the North as a sign of pro-BJP wave in favour of Prime Minister Vajpayee. Over-confidence and a sense of complacency and driven by its hyped “feel good factor” and India Shining campaign, the BJP could not judge the groundswell of disappointment among the poor who felt left out of the economic growth.

The surprise is how a leader like Vajpayee with such sweeping personal ratings could get his party-and coalition-wiped out so comprehensively. Many call it the revenge of the poor to the feel-good classes and so on. But political analyst Shekhar Gupta says “the import of this election is more intricate than just that. If it was so simple, how come the greatest beneficiaries of feel-good economics, in South Bombay and New Delhi, the mall-multiplex crowd in Gurgaon, have voted exactly the same way as the debt-strangled farmer in Vijayawada, the jobless graduate in Hazaribagh, or the petrified Muslim in Mehsana ?

This dramatic verdict is as much about anti-incumbency as about the rising expectations of the voter. As reform pulls more Indians above the poverty line, they are moving the bar of their expectations higher. This voter is more unforgiving, demanding, tougher to fool. It would then require something extraordinary to blunt his almost compulsive rejection of the incumbent. Vajpayee had it in him to do so. There were times when he rose above his party in the national interest. A pity, the party failed to rise with him and when it went out seeking votes in his name, there was a disconnect. As if he did not belong to them, or they did not deserve him.

Vajpayee would, therefore, rue the few occasions he allowed pressures from the same party to hold back from what he knew to be morally correct and politically prudent. He stopped short of sacking Narendra Modi and was then forced into that suicidal alliance with Jayalalithaa. His instinct said one thing, he let his party force him to do the opposite”.



Future of NDA

Speculation has started in political circles over the future of the National Democratic Alliance whose cohesiveness was attributed to power rather than ideology. Observers note that the future of the NDA could also be at stake since the BJP, which was the senior-most partner in the alliance, may decide to push forward its core Hindutva (Hindu activism) agenda in order to refurbish its image amongst Hindus and revive itself in its strongholds.

Under Vajpayee, the BJP had put several of its core issues in abeyance in order to push forward a common minimum programme although its hidden agenda did surface while implementing major decisions. The BJP leadership would therefore be under pressure from the Sangh Parivar (RSS family) to get back to its basic belief in ideology instead of flirting with power. A rethink is likely to start amongst socialists who were a part of the NDA and some leaders may raise the slogan of socialist unity outside the NDA in order to consolidate their position.

Many of them would also find it hard to accept Advani as their leader especially when the spoils of power are no longer there to share. The BJP can get the position of the leader of the Opposition by virtue of being the single largest party. It doesn’t need any of its partners who could prove to be a liability later.

The NDA, in fact, had collapsed to a great degree during Vajpayee’s leadership itself. For instance, the Lok Jan Shakti, the National Conference, the INLD, the DMK, the PMK and the RLD parted company with Vajpayee and Co. Even Mayawati was forced to leave and both Chandrababu Naidu and Jayalalitha may have second thoughts about continuing their relationship with the NDA since their secular credentials have seriously been dented by their links to the BJP. Every one of them knows that the vote in 2004 was for secular ideology as against communal fundamentalism. It was also a vote against Vajpayee as it was for Sonia Gandhi. Nothing exposed the BJP claim of good governance than the defeat in Delhi where the party lost six of the seven seats it had held earlier.



States that spelt doom for NDA

Uttar Pradesh

In a major upset for the BJP, the ruling

Samajwadi Party bagged 36 of the 80 seats

in the state. The SP alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal worked effectively. The SP has also substantially increased its voting percentage. The BSP also made spectacular gains, leaving the BJP far behind with just 11 seats - down from its 1999 tally of 29 seats.

Despite aggressive campaigning by BJP leaders,including Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Pramod Mahajan, the party, fraught with dissension, could not improve its position. While Vajpayee won in Lucknow by a margin of over 200,000 votes, several BJP leaders failed to make it. Notable among the losers were HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, a three-time winner from Allahabad. The new entrant to the party, Arif Mohammad Khan, lost Kaiderganj to the SP and with this failed the BJP’s experiment of securing Muslim support by fielding a Muslim candidate in a Muslim-dominated area. The results ultimately showed that the BJP propaganda to spoil the image of the SP by talking of similarity of views, was seen through by the voters and the Muslims more or less stuck to the SP leader Mulayam.



Bihar blow

If exit poll projections lowered the NDA’s

great expectations in Bihar, the actual results

were a bigger blow. Several NDA stalwarts lost as the RJD-led alliance reaped unexpected gains bagging over 26 seats. Though the NDA generally did badly, getting only 11 seats, the union ministers fared worse. A.B. Vajpayee’s decision to include nine MPs from Bihar in his cabinet to counter Rabri Devi didn’t pay. The ministers were more unpopular in their constituencies than most people had imagined.

All the four BJP ministers - C.P. Thakur, Shahnawaz Hussain, Sanjay Paswan and Hukumdeo Narain Yadav - fell by the wayside. The fate of another, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, will be decided later as re-polling in Chapra will take place on May 31.

The JD(U) fared no better. Of its four ministers, only George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar managed to win. Sharad Yadav and Digvijay Singh were trounced, while Nitish also suffered the ignominy of losing from Barh. Fernandes’ shift to Muzaffarpur nearly ended in disaster as he could scrape through by only about 9,000 votes.

Only two of the 12 outgoing BJP MPs could retain their seats, while the JD(U) retained only four of 18.



Tamil Nadu disaster

The NDA’s experiment with Jayalalithaa

went horribly wrong in Tamil Nadu

where the DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance swept all 39 seats in the state and the lone seat in Pondicherry. For Chief Minister Jayalalitha, it was her most humiliating defeat since 1996.

The DMK and its allies won by huge margins of over 100,000 votes in all but one of the 39 seats. Only in Periyakulam (Jayalalitha’s constituency) did AIADMK candidate T.T.V. Dinakaran manage to whittle down the margin to 21,000 votes but still lost to J.M. Haroon of the Congress.

Among the prominent winners of the DMK front were former Union ministers P. Chidambaram, T.R. Baalu, A. Raja, K.V. Thangabaalu, Dhanushkodi Adithan, former TNCC chief E.V.K.S Elangovan and Murasoli Maran’s son Dayanidhi Maran.

The BJP, which held four seats in the last House, failed to win even one, with all its candidates losing by margins of 100,000-plus. “It is a real shocker. We expected some close fights, but even that did not happen,” admitted BJP national secretary L. Ganesan.



Andhra debacle

While the BJP drew a blank, the Telugu

Desam Party (TDP) managed to get

only five seats out of 42. The BJP, which contested nine seats, lost everywhere by huge margins. This is the third time in the past 15 years that the BJP has drawn a blank in Lok Sabha polls in the state. In the assembly too, the BJP had got only two seats out of the 27 it contested.

In 1989, the party contested two seats in alliance with TDP but failed to score a victory. Again, in 1996, the BJP contested 39 and could not win a single seat.

The TDP also turned out its second worst performance in Lok Sabha polls since 1984. That year, the party, which always contested the polls in alliance with some opposition parties, won 30 seats. But it lost heavily with only two seats coming its way in 1989.

It won 13 seats in 1991 and its tally improved slightly to 16 in 1996 but dropped again to 12 in 1998. The TDP-BJP alliance worked wonders in 1999, helping the TDP win 29 seats, making it the second biggest party in the NDA after the BJP. Now, with its tally of just five seats, the TDP has been almost marginalised at the national level.



Gujarat shock

The Congress erased bitter memories of

the 2002 Assembly elections in Gujarat,

wresting 12 of the 26 seats. The BJP had to be content with 14. Chief Minister Modi had won Gujarat riding on the communal factor after the Godhra-led riots. The Hindutva factor was the strongest in this state. Therefore losing ground here is an even greater shock for the BJP than perhaps in UP or Bihar. In sweet revenge for the 1999 saffron-wash, the Congress trounced the BJP in Delhi winning six of the seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital, unseating three Union Ministers. This is a remarkable result because the “feel good” and “India Shining” factor was supposed to be foremost in urban areas. The BJP lost even in Mumbai and Hyderabad.

However, the BJP put up an impressive show in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. The party improved on its 1999 tally of 21 in Madhya Pradesh, bagging 25 seats and relegated the Congress to a poor second with four seats. In Chhattisgarh, the BJP won 11 seats, leaving a lone seat for the Congress. In Rajasthan, its tally stood at 21 and that of the Congress at four.

In Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, swept 11 of the 13 Lok Sabha seats for which polling was conducted on May 10. The Congress, which had returned eight members in the previous House, could manage just two.