Exit polls: Regional parties halt BJP's victory march

If what exit polls have predicted turns out to be true, giving AAP a landslide victory in Delhi polls, what will be a sign of worry for BJP is the idea that a vote for Prime Minister Narendra Modi is essentially not a vote for BJP all the time that a clear pattern has emerged wherein voters are choosing differently in election for Centre and that for states.

Strong regional leaders can halt the BJP’s victory march in states where the saffron party’s face is not Narendra Modi. The phenomenon was seen in last year Jharkhand assembly polls, where a known tribal face Hemant Soren of Jharkhand blocked BJP’s attempt to return to power for a second time. Earlier Naveen Patnaik won Odisha, YSRC leader YS Jagan Mohan Reddy Andhra Pradesh and K Chandrashekhar Rao Telangana. In 2018 Kamal Nath and Ashok Gehlot delivered Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan respectively to Congress. In 2017, Captain Amarinder Singh had delivered Punjab to Congress.

BJP will again be put to test on this pattern in upcoming assembly polls in West Bengal state polls in 2021, where it had won a whopping 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 general elections but have no matching regional face to take on Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress. Bihar where assembly polls are due this year, the BJP has so far kept its ally, Nitish Kumar, in good humor and it may breathe easy against the combination of Congress and Lalu Prasad's RJD.

The gap between the votes BJP is getting at the national level and state level, where its regional leaders are not so charismatic, has also been established by the fact that even before and after losing state polls, BJP has won more seats in the same states in central polls. In Delhi itself, the BJP had won all seven Lok Sabha seats just eight months back.

In Delhi this time, exit polls have predicted between 2 to 25 seats (mostly not more than 15) for BJP, which is far below from its lead in 65 of 70 assembly seats just eight months ago during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

BJP, however, can still take solace in the fact that it had won abysmally low—just three of 70 seats in 2015 assembly polls which had happened after a similar gap post the 2014 Lok Sabha polls that had given the BJP a single-party majority in Parliament, a feat that was achieved by any political party for the first time 30 years after 1984.

The view in the BJP was also that it cannot lay down its arms even when faced with a nearly impossible target otherwise it will demoralise the cadres. Even after the exit polls were out, BJP Delhi chief Manoj Tiwari tweeted saying all exit polls will fail on February 11 when results are out. Soon after exit polls were out, Home Minister Shah huddled into a meeting with all seven BJP MPs of Delhi in which BJP general secretaries including Murlidhar Rao and Union Minister and party's Delhi in-charge Prakash Javadekar brainstormed the political situation.

Even amid utmost adversity, the party will tried to put its best foot forward was the refrain in the party and hence it was not without any reason that BJP President JP Nadda and former party chief Home Minister Amit Shah each held nearly four thousand rallies and road-shows and Shah.