Belting up for the fight

Rasheed Kidwai
Senior journalist & author

THE 2019 General Election will be a referendum on Narendra Modi and a decisive test for Rahul Gandhi and a range of regional satraps, namely Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, MK Stalin, Chandrababu Naidu, Naveen Patnaik, Akhilesh Yadav and others.  

Ostensibly, it is advantage Modi. Airstrikes and a heavy dose of nationalism in the wake of the Pulwama massacre, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s towering personality, popular ratings, Amit Shah’s famed election machinery, alliance with 29 parties, funds and resources seemingly make 2019 a one-horse race. But in more pragmatic and nuanced terms, there is a lot more to the country’s elections than these ‘fashionable tags’. The elections are fundamentally fought in states where each parliamentary constituency has its own set of local factors. Anti-incumbency tends to be a lot more punishing for outgoing MPs. The idea of changing a bulk of the sitting MPs is neither practical nor desirable in terms of caste or sub-caste factors that make or mar a candidate.      

On the day CEC Sunil Arora and his team announced the poll schedule, ABP News-CVoter aired their ‘mood of the nation’ survey. While CVoter’s NDA tally of 264 seats projection may be welcoming for Modi and the BJP, seat forecast from various regions signals concern. More importantly, airstrikes and the Pulwama aftermath seem to have little or no impact on voters from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and many other states. ABP-CVoter survey’s projected score from Punjab gives Congress 12 seats and one for the Akali-BJP combine. Punjab projection re-emphasises the role of regional satraps in the country’s politics. Capt Amarinder Singh in Chandigarh, Kamal Nath in Bhopal, Bhupesh Baghel in Naya Raipur, and Ashok Gehlot in Jaipur have the ability to script a Congress success story. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi need to constantly ponder, with a tinge of regret, how high-handedness and fabricated high command culture cost them Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra, Chandrasekhar Rao in Telangana, Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam and on earlier occasions, Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra and Mamata Banerjee in Bengal. If Sonia and Rahul closed their eyes and dream about having Jagan, Rao, Sarma, Pawar and Mamata in their ranks, 2019 outcome would appear very different and promising. Ironically, men guilty of the Andhra mess, from Pranab Mukherjee to Chidambaram to Digvijaya Singh, benefited immensely from both Sonia and Rahul.

Politics, as Sonia and Rahul may draw some solace, is not about daydreaming or ruing about past blunders. ABP–CVoter predicts the mahagathbandhan (alliance between Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal) in Uttar Pradesh, getting 47 out of 80 seats in the state where the BJP had won 71 parliamentary seats in 2014. The survey indicates Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool getting 34 out of 42 seats from Bengal. Thus, the BJP’s likely shortfall of 41 seats from UP is significant.

As per the survey, the BJP-NDA may get a big chunk of seats from Bihar and Odisha, winning 36 and 12 seats, respectively. Assuming it to be accurate, the survey has given BJP-NDA a generous 24 out of 29 seats from Madhya Pradesh, 20 out of 25 Lok Sabha seats from Rajasthan and 24 out of 26 seats from Gujarat. Anyone familiar with the ground-level political situation would vouch that after the Assembly polls in these states, the BJP tally of 2014 in MP and Rajasthan [optimum gains of 27 out of 29 and 25 out of 25, respectively] are set to be reduced by half at least. In Gujarat, too, the opposition is favourably poised to get 10 Lok Sabha seats.

The Congress continues to face many dilemmas in Uttar Pradesh. Many Muslim and Dalit pressure groups want Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi to work out a last-minute tie-up with SP-BSP-RLD. Priyanka and Jyotiraditya Scindia, however, have a different take. They wish to position the Congress as a third alternative in the state, particularly to the upper castes and floating voters who are fed up with either Yogi Adityanath, Mayawati or Akhilesh. The Congress leadership is also conscious of losing its identity within the mahagathbandhan and rationale of bringing in Priyanka. The grand old party also does not relish conceding 8-10 parliamentary seats outside UP to the SP-BSP combine.

The paradox of short-term versus long-term benefits prevented the Congress from aligning with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi and the same set of contradictions is coming in the way of mahagathbandhan in UP or seat-sharing formula with either the Trinamool or the Left parties in Bengal. There is no dearth of Congress leaders who scoff at the prospects of the party contesting less than 350 parliamentary seats.   

The survey has come after the Pulwama terror attack and the airstrikes across the LoC in Balakot. In an earlier survey in January, the NDA was predicted to get 233 seats, while the UPA was predicted to settle for 167 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. At 24, Akbar Road, New Delhi,  that houses the Congress headquarters, the assessment is that the NDA will struggle to cross the 200 Lok Sabha seat mark and the game is very much open. Sonia Gandhi, by choosing to contest from Rai Bareli herself, has indicated that she is prepared to abandon her self-imposed retirement from active politics to keep the NDA out of power.