The BJP’s allies: The old, the new and the necessary

Formed in 1998, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will turn 25 this May 15. Since 2015, the BJP has celebrated the anniversary of the Narendra Modi government zealously each May, but its enthusiasm to mark the NDA's birthday has dulled in the last few years. With the Lok Sabha 2024 polls 13 months away and the BJP being nervous about matching its 2014 and 2019 tallies, would the party mark the quarter century of the NDA differently this May?

"At a time when the NDA has shrunk, the message from the recently concluded Assembly polls in Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland underlined the continued salience of regional parties," political commentator Radhika Ramaseshan says. In all three states, despite the frequent visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the regional parties emerged dominant, as in Meghalaya and Nagaland. In Tripura, the identity-based Tipra Motha Party surfaced as a significant player, the number two party in the state legislature after the BJP.

Also Read | PM Modi to attend Tripura CM swearing-in on international women's day

The BJP's defeat in Maharashtra's Kasba Peth bypoll after 28 years signalled that a united Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) could reduce the Hindutva party's Lok Sabha tally in the state, the support from the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena notwithstanding. As psephologist Yashwant Deshmukh pointed out, the BJP lost in Pune's Kasba Peth despite increasing its vote share to 45 per cent from 43 per cent in 2014 because a comprehensive 'index of opposition unity' meant the Congress' MVA candidate polled 52 per cent.

An alternative

In Maharashtra's Chinchwad bypoll, the BJP defeated Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) only thanks to the 15 per cent votes the Shiv Sena rebel cornered. Few took Bihar CM Nitish Kumar's recent assertion that opposition unity can stop the BJP at a hundred seats seriously. On Saturday, NCP chief Sharad Pawar pointed to the Kasba Peth result to stress that 2024 wasn't a foregone conclusion. "The BJP's defeat in the Kasba Peth bypoll suggests people are considering an alternative," he said.

Political observers believe the BJP would soon feel the need to strengthen the NDA and start looking for allies across the country since it knows it has peaked in the Hindi heartland, and would struggle to repeat its 2019 performance in West Bengal and Odisha, where it together won 26 seats, while opposition unity would make it harder to reclaim its 2019 tally in Maharashtra and Bihar.

In 2014, the BJP contested 427 of the 543 seats, winning 282, while 21 NDA partners had Lok Sabha representation. In 2019, despite surrendering its sitting seats in Bihar to the Janata Dal (United), the BJP contested 437 seats, winning 303. Only a dozen of its NDA partners had any Lok Sabha representation. Several of the NDA’s oldest constituents — the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Shiv Sena, JDU and Shiromani Akali Dal — left the alliance in the last few years, complaining of the BJP not honouring the ‘gathbandhan dharma’.

One of its newest allies is Haryana’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP). In December 2022, its leader Dushyant Chautala announced that the JJP would contest Haryana’s Lok Sabha seats in alliance with the BJP. But Amit Shah left the young Chautala embarrassed a month later. Addressing a rally in Sonepat on January 29, Shah urged Haryanvis to ensure the blossoming of the lotus on all ten seats of Haryana. Since then, BJP’s local leaders have tried to allay the JJP’s fears, knowing that upsetting the influential Jats might not be the wisest move.

Also Read | Issues raised by Tipra Motha need to be addressed: Himanta

Reaching out

The Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya Assembly polls provided a peek into the BJP’s reaching out to overt and covert allies. In Meghalaya, the BJP was part of the Conrad Sangma-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government for five years but severed ties before the election, fielding candidates on all 60 seats. In his election speeches, Union Home Minister Shah, the current NDA chairman, alleged two “corrupt” families had run Meghalaya — that of Conrad’s and former CM and Trinamool Congress’ Mukul Sangma — filling their coffers with people’s money. The BJP manifesto promised to probe the corruption in Meghalaya.

Election results had Conrad’s National People’s Party (NPP) improving from its 2018 tally of 19 seats to 26, while the BJP just about retained its two seats. It now embraced Conrad. “My friend, late Shri PA Sangma ji would have been very proud,” the PM tweeted, the allegations of “family corruption” swiftly forgotten.

In Nagaland, BJP’s allies from Maharashtra and Bihar, the Republican Party of India (Athawale) and the Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) debuted in the electoral fray, fielding candidates against the Neiphiu Rio-led Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP). The NDDP and BJP were allies in this election, as they were in 2018. While NDDP increased its tally to 25, the BJP remained at 12.

The Nagaland elections were reminiscent of the ‘Bihar electoral stratagem’ of 2020 when LJP fielded candidates against BJP ally Nitish Kumar-led JDU, but not against the BJP. The LJP was then an ally of the BJP at the Centre. It could win only one of the 135 it contested, but its candidates gnawed into the JDU’s Dalit support base enough for the latter to get reduced to 43 seats, paving the way for Kumar’s exit from the NDA two years hence. Six JDU legislators in Arunachal Pradesh joined the BJP in December 2020, a few months after the Bihar polls.

A deeper analysis of Tripura results showed that the division of votes between the Left-Congress alliance and Tipra Motha helped the BJP win 16 seats, of which the CPI(M) could have won eight, Tipra Motha, five, and Congress, four, if all of them fought together.

“My gut feeling is that the BJP, closer to 2024, will get realistic about its poll prospects. It is always much more pragmatic and resilient than the Congress and will seek the hands of parties, especially in the south where it needs to expand its footprint,” Ramaseshan says, adding that the BJP will have to introspect its failure to retain allies. The BJP, however, would struggle to get allies in the east since Bengal’s demography will not allow Trinamool Congress to ally with it, while in Odisha, the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal has had a loose post-poll arrangement with the Hindutva party.

The BJP’s spadework for 2024, at least in UP and Bihar, has started. According to reports, it is trying to get Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) back into its fold in UP. The SBSP contested the 2022 UP Assembly polls as an ally of the Samajwadi Party. In Bihar, backward caste leader Upendra Kushwaha and some others have walked out of the JDU and their newly floated party, the RLJD, hopes to ally with the BJP in 2024. In Maharashtra, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena could help BJP usurp the Sena support base, while parties such as the Akalis and TDP are keen to mend fences with the BJP.

But nothing is permanent in politics. On August 30, 2003, Arunachal Pradesh chief minister, veteran Congressman Gegong Apang, merged his Arunachal Pradesh Congress with the BJP. Arunachal became the first BJP-ruled state in the northeast. Few had then expected the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government to lose the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, which, nine months later, it did. Apang and his band of MLAs returned to the Congress within weeks of the BJP losing power at the Centre in May 2004.