Narendra Modi, who was sworn-in India's 15th prime minister on May 26, brought
an unprecedented victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), matched in its
intensity and sweep only by the crushing defeat of the Congress in the 16th
general elections. The BJP returns to power at the Centre after 10 years.
Allies will also be part of the government, though the BJP is not dependent on
any for numbers. BJP notched up a comfortable majority of 282 seats on its own
and grossed 336 seats with allies in the 543-member house.
The BJP won a
simple majority for the first time, only the second time a non-Congress party
has done so. The BJP also became the first party since 1984 to get a majority
on its own.
India has not had
a single party rule since 1989. An Opposition party comes to power in such a
manner for the second time, the earlier being the 1977 elections in the wake of
Emergency.
BJP
Ends Historic 30-Year Journey
It has been a roller coaster ride for BJP
in the past 30 years with the saffron party in pole position on May 16 after
having a measly two seats in 1984. In stark contrast, the fortunes reversed for
the ruling Congress in an unprecedented way as it saw the party’s kitty dwindle
from a record 415 during this period with results and trends indicating it may
not get more than 50 seats.
The victory for the BJP in the saffron
surge is also significant because India has not had a single party rule for 25
long years since 1989 during which coalition or minority governments have been
in power.
A Modi wave has catapulted the BJP to
power after 10 long years in the opposition with its tally set to more than
double from 117 in an election which saw the BJP prime ministerial candidate
secure a huge mandate. This is for the second time in Independent India that an
Opposition party has come to power in such a manner, the earlier being the 1977
election that was held after the infamous Emergency era that brought the Janata
Party to power.
The BJP came to power for the fourth time
since it was founded in 1980 after the split in the Janata Party. Its first
government in 1996 lasted for a merely 13 days and was dubbed 13-day wonder by
the Congress.
In 1998, the next government of the BJP
via the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) route lasted 13 months while in 1999
it again came to power leading the NDA in the backdrop of the Kargil conflict
with the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee projecting it as a victory
over Pakistan. The largest number of 182 seats was won by BJP in this election.
In fact, the BJP suffered its worst
defeat in 1984 after the formation of the party. It could win only two seats in
the 543-member Lok Sabha in the wake of the sympathy wave for the Congress
following assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Even Vajpayee was among several top
opposition leaders who had lost in the election in which the BJP had secured
one seat each from Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat respectively. For the Congress,
it is the lowest tally, which is less than the lowest ever of 114 in 1999.
Incidentally, both the record lows have
come under the stewardship of Sonia Gandhi who has the distinction of being the
longest serving president of the Grand Old Party.
Sonia has been at the helm of the
Congress since 1998 after the party ousted Sitaram Kesari from the top post in
the wake of the party losing the Lok Sabha election that year.
The results have come as a rude jolt for
the Congress given the fact that it had been in power for 10 long years via the
coalition route. Sonia started the first experiment of Congress sharing power
at the Centre in May 2004 after remaining in political wilderness for eight
long years.
While Narasimha Rao came to power in 1991
in the wake of assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, he ran a minority government for
some time. Manmohan Singh, who was brought by Rao as his Finance Minister,
ushered in the economic reforms that changed the face of India.
Incidentally, Modi, chief minister of
Gujarat since 2001, used the development plank to the hilt by projecting the
Gujarat Model that appeared to have struck a chord with people hit hard by
rising prices and corruption and growing joblessness in the backdrop of a
global slowdown.
Modi’s detractors raked up the 2002
Gujarat riots repeatedly accusing him of “zehar ki kheti” and polarisation of
voters.
The election was also significant as the
Left parties, fighting with their back to the wall, are set to register their
lowest tally.
Modi
Factor
Carefully scripted by his crack team, the
‘Modi vs Rest’ is a story that could have easily backfired. After the
appointment of Modi as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in 2013, the
question that arose was whether this poll would reverse the trend of several
general polls since 1989. The election for the ninth Lok Sabha that saw
Vishwanath Pratap Singh becoming Prime Minister was the last time when a single
issue held sway over a considerable part of India. Though the polls in 1984 had
a greater national footprint, being held as they were after the assassination
of Indira Gandhi, the issue of corruption in high place played out
significantly in 1989. But thereafter, all polls became an aggregate of several
local polls, at times aggregated either constituency by constituency in some extreme
instances, or at state and sub-regional levels on most occasions.
Every single election since 1991 has not been influenced significantly by a
single issue. If at all they were, barring in 2009 when the Congress was given
an improved mandate following a string of pro-poor policies of the government,
parliamentary polls were affected by a negative vote, like in 2004 when the
BJP-led government was voted out. By the middle of 2013, however, it appeared
that the emergence of Modi as the electoral mascot of BJP had led to a
situation where endorsing or rejecting him would become the single-largest
issue in this election. In the early stages, the election had not appeared to
be becoming a virtual referendum on Modi, but by the end of the campaign this
is what appears to be the case. It is therefore not wrong to say that this
election can be described in one word — Modi.
The entire campaign of the BJP has been
based on a singular principle and been pitted against the syncretic nature of
India’s political culture. The issue of growth has been framed in the context
of limitations of a coalition government. For a considerable period of time
Modi has suggested that a growth oriented political system where rights are
available in limited doses is a better bet than a messy democracy. When he
began his march to Delhi in serious intent after the Assembly polls of December
2012, Modi’s first target was diluting the collective leadership of the BJP.
Just as he reduced the party to one with only one individual being in charge,
he has asked for a similar mandate from the electorate.
Tsunami
in Uttar Pradesh
Of the crucial 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh,
the BJP has won 71 on its own and its alliance partner Apna Dal has brought in
another two. This reduces the Opposition parties in UP to seven seats
altogether — shared by the Yadavs and Gandhis.
Not even Modi's close associate Amit Shah
had perdicted such large-scale victory. He had given 50 to 55 seats to the BJP
and predicted that the BSP will come second.
Both his prophecies were way off the mark
as the BSP shockingly drew a blank. However, it is hard to claim that Uttar
Pradesh took Modi to unmatched victory. Even without UP, Modi was well on his
way to rule the country.
The UP verdict is, however, a clear
paradigm shift. The tools which had been in use to assess and analyse political
and sociological situations in the state have suddenly become ineffectual. At
the moment, all analysis based on intricate caste and sub-caste calculations,
community and regional variations have been unable to adequately explain the
results.
Even at the height of the Ram Mandir
movement, the BJP had managed to win 54 seats and account for 33 percent of the
vote share.
In 2014, without any ostensible external
factor, the BJP has won 71+2 seats and its vote share is 42.3 percent. This
decisive vote for Modi is clearly a positive vote for change. It is the
yearning of the common people for respite from their daily drudgery of power
failures, potholed roads, corruption seeping the system, scams and the general
feeling of despondency that has been plaguing the governments both at the
national and the state level.
Still, it is not for a party like Aam
Aadmi Party (AAP) that promised a new
kind of transparent polity. Even its convener Arvind Kejriwal failed to win.
More surprisingly, months of hard work of Kumar Vishwas in Amethi did not get
him even the second slot.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) managed to win
five family seats, of which Mulayam Singh Yadav would have to forgo one,
leaving the party with only four. This puts a big question mark on the Akhilesh
Yadav-led government in the state. Six ministers, 13 MLAs and even the Vidhan
Sabha Speaker have bitten the dust. But, the chief minister would have to tread
carefully to contain the damage as BJP Jhansi MP Uma Bharti has already hinted
at 40 SP MLAs being in touch with the BJP.
Similarly, all seven UPA-II ministers
from UP have not just lost but (except one) failed to save their deposits. The
other significant aspect is that the BJP has won all 17 reserved seats,
indicating an important shift in the Dalit vote. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)
which saw itself emerging as a 'balance of power' after the elections is
completely routed.
Of course, credit for the BJP's stellar
performance in the State which sends the largest number of MPs to the Lok Sabha
also goes in large measure to the party's in-charge of the State and Modi's
confidant, Amit Shah, who created magic there with his organizational skills
and deft exploitation of the people’s anger with the SP, the BSP and the
Congress-led UPA. The win, incidentally, means that both Mulayam Singh Yadav
and Mayawati are under siege, and the next Assembly election to the State could
see a change as dramatic as the one we are witness to now.
Opponents
Crushed in Bihar
The BJP-led NDA crushed Bihar Chief
Minister Nitish Kumar's party Janata Dal (United) and the RJD-Congress combine
by winning 31 of the state's 40 seats. The Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal
combine in the state won seven seats and the ruling JD (U) won only two. Nitish
Kumar has resigned a day after his party suffered a drubbing in the general
elections.
RJD chief Lalu Prasad's wife and former
Chief Minister Rabri Devi was defeated by BJP candidate and former union
minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy in Saran by 44,000 votes, while their daughter Misa
Bharti was defeated in Pataliputra by BJP's Ram Kirpal Yadav by 42,000 votes.
RJD candidate Pappu Yadav defeated JD (U) President Sharad Yadav in Madhepura.
Congress leader Mohammad Asrarul Haque won from Muslim-majority Kishanganj.
Pappu Yadav's wife Ranjeet Ranjan of the Congress won from Supaul.
Spectacular
Wins in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra
Riding on the “Gujarat pride” wave, Modi
led his party to a spectacular victory in his home state of Gujarat, making a clean
sweep of all 26 seats throwing on the wayside a former chief minister and three
members of the outgoing Manmohan Singh cabinet.
Former Chief Minister Shankarsinh
Vaghela, once a colleague of Modi in the state BJP, who before the election
claimed he saw “coming of the third UPA ministry” and expected the Congress to
win at least 16 seats in the state, was himself biting the dust at his
Sabarkantha constituency in north Gujarat.
While Modi himself defeated All-India
Congress Committee general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, a close confidant of
the party vice-president Rahul Gandhi, by a near-record margin of over 5.20
lakh votes in Vadodara, three ministers of state in the outgoing central
cabinet, Dinsha Patel (Kheda), Bharatsinh Solanki (Anand) and Tushar Chaudhary
(Bardoli) also failed to open the account for the Congress in the state.
In Rajasthan, the made a clean sweep in
Rajasthan by winning all the 25 Lok Sabha seats from the desert state. The
Congress, on the other hand, recorded its worst defeat in the state’s history.
The Congress won 20 seats in 2009 and the party’s lowest tally was one in the
post-Emergency 1977 elections.
Prominent Congress leaders who lost
included union ministers Sachin Pilot (Ajmer), Girja Vyas (Chittorgarh),
Bhanwar Jitendra Singh (Alwar) and Chandresh Kumari (Jodhpur), and party
leaders Namonarain Meena (Dausa) and former India cricket captain Mohammad
Azharuddin (Tonk-Sawai Madhopur).
In Maharashtra, Modi wave has swept away
the ruling Congress-NCP coalition. Of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state, the
five-party alliance led by the BJP has won 41 seats.
Among the stalwarts of the ruling front
who bit the dust today include union ministers Sushilkumar Shinde, Praful Patel
and Milind Deora. Other prominent losers include Chhagan Bhujbal and Padamsinh
Patil of the NCP and Priya Dutt and Sanjay Nirupam from the Congress.
Controversial leader Ashok Chavan of the
Congress contesting from Nanded and NCP boss Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya
Sule contesting from Baramati are just two prominent faces to win from the
ruling front. Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has turned out to be a
total flop in the current Lok Sabha elections.
AIADMK
Gets Third Place
Tamil Nadu's ruling AIADMK rode on a
Jayalalithaa wave to gobble up 37 of the state's 39 Lok Sabha seats to become
one of the largest parties in the 2014 elections. The wave was such that there
will be no Congress or DMK representative from the state in the Lok Sabha for
the next five years as things stand now.
Many of the prominent candidates of these
two parties as well as from others crashed to defeat. They included DMK's A
Raja, Dayanidhi Maran, TKS Elangovan, T.R. Baalu and Congress' Karti
P.Chidambaram, son of Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, EVKS Elangovan and others.
MDMK's candidates including its leader
Vaiko, candidates from the two communist parties and AAP also lost. However,
PMK's Anbumani Ramadoss contesting from Dharmapuri and BJP's Pon Radhakrishan
from Kanyakumari were the two victorious survivors. Both parties are in
alliance.
Mamata
Magic Worked in West Bengal
The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) led
by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee swept West Bengal by winning 34 of the
42 seats in the elections. The BJP, which had no political base in the state,
won two seats.
The Congress retained four of the six
seats, but the CPM and other Left Front parties put up the worst show by
winning only two seats against the 15 it had won in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
Reasons Behind
Congress Debacle
The Congress got a crushing defeat in all
the seven Lok Sabha seats primarily because of anti-incumbency at the Center coupled with the shifting of its vote bank toward the newbie AAP. Also, there
is a feeling among a large section of people that the Congress MPs in the city were
not easily accessible to the common people.
Many in the party feel that the Congress
was defeated as its candidates did not go for aggressive campaigning. What is
bothering the Congress leadership the most is the fact that it has suffered
defeat in all the 70 Assembly segments, which fall under the purview of the
seven Lok Sabha seats.
The downslide of the Congress in Delhi
began in the December 2013 Assembly elections when the party could log its
victory in only eight of the 70-member Assembly. The party, which had won all
the seven seats in the previous Lok Sabha elections, were pushed to the third
position in these Lok Sabha elections. Even the one-year-old AAP, which got an
electrifying victory in the Assembly elections, stood second in the parliamentary
poll.
It is said if the votes polled by the AAP
were added to the tally of the Congress candidates, all of them would have
easily made it to the Lok Sabha.“Delhiites were fed up with the scams which
hogged the newspaper headlines every day. More to it, middle and lower middle
class had to face high inflation in all essential commodities. That is why
people voted for a change. Because of polarization, Muslims voted in a large
numbers for the AAP. That is another factor which led to Congress defeat.
Assessment
The 2014 elections have seen the
incumbent United Progressive Alliance crash to an ignominious defeat with the
Congress party, already on a downward spiral in several elections, now
humiliatingly reduced to a double-digit figure in Parliament, its worst
electoral tally since Independence. An indefensibly uninspiring campaign led by
Rahul Gandhi failed to rally a young and impatient electorate. The BJP’s
landslide victory, almost entirely attributable to the sweeping effect of the
Modi wave across India, reflects the intensity of the desire for more effective
governance. The rising public anger as a result of the UPA’s policy paralysis,
stalled economic growth and worst of all, the series of corruption scandals,
created a hunger for change especially among young Indians who see Modi as a
leader symbolizing their expectations of fast economic growth unshackled from
red tape and corruption.
In the era of coalition politics, no one
saw the possibility of the BJP getting a clear mandate. The UPA always blamed
coalition compulsions whenever it was accused of making any compromise with
national interests. Now that the people have given a free hand to Modi, they
ought to have huge expectations of him. It is time for Modi to deliver.
Record High for
BJP
* Modi becomes new prime minister of India
* BJP comes to
power for the fourth time since its foundation in 1980 after the split in the
Janata Party. Its first government in 1996 lasted 13 days
* In 1998, the
next BJP govt via NDA route lasted 13 months. In 1999, it again came to power
leading NDA in the backdrop of Kargil war
* BJP won the
largest number of 182 seats in 1999
* Party had
its worst defeat in 1984 after its formation. It won only two seats in the
543-member Lok Sabha in the wake of Indira Gandhi's assassination
* Atal Bihari
Vajpayee was among several top opposition leaders who lost in 1984.
Congress Disaster
* It is the
lowest tally for Cong, less than 114 in 1999
* Both the
record lows came under Sonia's stewardship. She is the longest serving
president of the grand old party
* Sonia Gandhi is at
the helm of the Congress since 1998 after the party ousted Sitaram Kesari from
the top post
* She started
the first experiment of sharing power at the Centre in May 2004 after remaining
in political wilderness for eight years