Could Sunday herald the rise of a Federal Front?

The spectacular win of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and its prolonged afterglow have managed to conceal another interesting electoral detail: The party that so dominates Parliament has an underwhelming record in Assembly polls.

The seemingly unstoppable BJP juggernaut has secured majorities in merely two of the 18 Assembly polls to have taken place since February 2018. The states where it secured outright majorities are Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh.

The BJP would hope the results of the current round of Assembly polls to four states and a union territory – Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and Puducherry – redress this statistic somewhat.

The wins could make up for electoral reverses in the Assembly polls held since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP lost its governments in Jharkhand and Maharashtra. Delhi was a resounding defeat, and it struggled to hold on to its governments in Haryana and Bihar.

More recent losses have come in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council elections in April and the Karnataka civic polls on Friday.

The best the BJP can wish for in Kerala and Tamil Nadu is a marginal increase in the number of its seats and fractional rise in its vote shares.

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But the BJP has waged grim battles to return to power with its own majority in Assam and wrest West Bengal from the Trinamool Congress. This is part of its larger plan to expand in eastern India and Coromandel states.

The BJP government at the Centre faces mounting criticism over its farm laws and handling of the Covid-19 situation. How it deals with the two issues would be important to its success in the next round of crucial Assembly polls in less than a year from now.

In February-March, the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur are scheduled for polls.

The protests on farm laws make it difficult for the BJP to survive as an electoral force in Punjab. In UP, the spread of the coronavirus and its poor handling would be of concern in the run up to the Assembly polls early next year.

The results of the ongoing panchayat elections in UP should give us a peek into the minds of the voters in the electorally most important state of India. The BJP's majorities in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabhas were possible because of its sweeps of most of UP's 80-seats.

BJP’s intriguing Assembly poll record

However, its inability to secure majorities in 16 of the 18 Assembly polls since 2018 has meant the BJP had to resort to backdoor machinations to form its governments in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.

It saw power slip through its hands in Maharashtra despite emerging the single-largest party. In Haryana, the BJP held on to power only after aligning with a pre-poll opponent, the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP). The BJP has found it embarrassing to support some of the policies of its ally, particularly a proposal to reserve 75 per cent of private jobs for the local youth.

The BJP lost Assembly polls and governments in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand during this period. It had also lost in Madhya Pradesh, but formed a government through the back door 15 months later.

It failed to wrest Delhi, and drew a blank in Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, it could not make much of a mark in the Assembly polls that have taken place in the rest of the northeastern states – Sikkim, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Nagaland.

Its successes in the Assembly polls 2018 were displacing the Congress as the principal opposition party in Odisha and Telangana, and emerging the single largest party in Bihar.

Congress searches for a lifeline

Wayanad and Kerala have done in two years what Amethi and Uttar Pradesh could not in 15 years – made Rahul Gandhi a better politician.

In representing Wayanad Lok Sabha seat in the last two years, Gandhi has asked 58 questions in the Lok Sabha, which compares favourably with the average of 71 questions for all 543 MPs. In the 15 years that he represented Amethi from 2004 to 2019, Gandhi had asked a grand total of three questions – all three in 2005.

Gandhi has himself acknowledged the contribution of the people of Kerala, commending their better understanding of issues. He also visits Wayanad more often than he used to visit Amethi. He has worked on his common touch – cooking biryani with villagers, swimming with fisherfolk and teaching aikido moves to school students.

A win in Kerala would ease the way for Gandhi to return as the party chief, and prepare the Congress for its next big electoral battle in Gujarat in December 2022.

However, a loss in Kerala would embolden his detractors within the Congress, particularly the ‘group of 23’ leaders.

Similarly, a loss in Assam would have many ask Gandhi why the Congress struck an open alliance with Badruddin Ajmal’s All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), a party that in popular perception is seen as representing the interests of Muslims from Bangladesh.

To Gandhi’s advantage, most of the ‘G23’ leaders do not have much of a mass following. If the party heads for a split, the rank and file are likely to support the dynasty.

After the loss in 2019 Lok Sabha, Gandhi had told his friends and lieutenants that the Congress needs to burn down to the ashes before it rediscovers its ideological moorings and rises like the proverbial phoenix. May 2 will tell us if Gandhi and his party would be willing to pay that cost.

Federal front

A win for the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala, MK Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in West Bengal would strengthen the calls to shape a federal front to take on the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Banerjee has already proposed a meeting of the leaders of regional parties after May 2.

The continuing decline of the Congress in several states, and the BJP replacing the Congress as the principal opposition party against regional outfits, makes the formation of a federal front easier.

No longer do Naveen Patnaik of Odisha and K Chandrasekhar Rao of Telangana need to keep away from a front that will also have the Congress as a constituent. The main opposition in their respective states is no longer the Congress, but the BJP. With the Left Front likely to get decimated in Bengal, Banerjee is unlikely to have reservations in sharing the stage with Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan.

May 2 promises to open up interesting possibilities in Indian politics. There is, of course, the chance that it could extend the dominance of the BJP from the Centre to at least a couple of the states most geographically distant from Lutyens' Delhi.