Loss in Karnataka raises several questions for BJP

The BJP’s aggressive push for electoral gains in the South, a region where it is yet to prove its mettle, faced a significant hurdle on Saturday with its loss in its only government in the region. The loss of several sitting ministers, as well as an erosion in the key Lingayat plank has put the focus on the state unit’s infighting, and raised questions on the heft of its national leadership.

What does not help matters is that the party’s loss in two consecutive state elections are the home states of its key leaders; Himachal Pradesh which is the home state of party president JP Nadda, and Karnataka, which is home to the party’s general secretary organisation BL Santhosh.

Late Saturday evening, both Nadda and PM Modi sent out tweets accepting defeat, and pledging to work harder in the state.

The immediate fallout of the Karnataka loss will be felt in Telangana, where it will find it difficult to convince prominent leaders from other parties like the Congress or the Bharat Rashtra Samiti to join it as it heads to elections later this year. While state chief Bandi Sanjay said that there will be no effect of Karnataka in Telangana, the party’s paucity of bankable faces tell a different story.

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A chief of one of the party’s departments, involved with the party’s preparations for 2024, told DH that while they are expecting an aftermath in the Lok Sabha elections, the leader dismissed it as “miniscule”. As the BJP’s outreach in the South – with forays in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, too – intensifies, the lack of a BJP chief minister in any of the five states, will aid the Opposition in optics.

While questions on the fatigue of the prime minister’s popularity have arisen, the leader mentioned above, however, said that the party will bank on the prime minister in 2024. “Voting patterns in assemblies and the Lok Sabha are different; one must look at Rajasthan or Madhya Pradesh in the 2018 elections. We will bag seats in not just Karnataka, but in Himachal as well,” the leader, who did not wish to be named, said.

Significantly, for its preparations for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP cannot choose to ignore the voting patterns of two voter bases – the Lingayat community and the women vote – both chunks which had helped it in the past.

Lingayats, which account for 17 per cent of the voter base, have traditionally voted for the BJP. But this term, the party could manage only 30 of the 50 seats in Bombay Karnataka and 15 of the 40 seats in Hyderabad Karnataka.

Only 20 of the 68 Lingayat leaders the party gave tickets to won the elections. In its exit poll survey, AxisMyIndia has projected a 44 per cent voteshare of women in Congress’s votes, in comparison to 33 per cent of the BJP’s voteshare among women.

A consolidation in the AHINDA votebank for the Congress is also a reason for worry for the BJP. Among the 36 SC seats, the BJP managed to win only 12 while the Congress won 21. Similarly, in the OBC sections – a community the party is aggressively wooing for 2024 – the BJP won only 10 Vokkaliga seats while the Congress and JDS won 27 and 10 respectively.

Among the Kurubas, another OBC caste, the BJP won only 5 seats, while the Congress won 8.