lotus-blooms-congress-dooms-modi-delivers-bjp-victories

After a casual and caustic panauti remark against PM Narendra Modi by Rahul Gandhi following the cricket World Cup defeat, the assembly results of the four states have given the Congress leadership reasons to search for real panautis who reduced the party to rubble.

The Congress suffered a major poll casualty on the electoral sheet as the party miserably lost three major states — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh — to the BJP as the counting of votes of assembly elections was concluded on Sunday.

Telangana is the only state the Congress could capture by unseating K. Chandrashekar Rao-led Bharat Rashtra Samithi. Stunned by the defeat almost all top Congress leaders and Twitter warriors maintained deafening silence except the party’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge. “I thank the voters of Telangana for reposing their trust and confidence in the Indian National Congress. I also thank all those who voted for us in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. These election results have not been as per our expectations, but we are confident that we will come back stronger with hard work and determination…Without getting disheartened by this defeat, we along with INDIA parties have to start preparing for the Lok Sabha elections with double enthusiasm,” Kharge tweeted.

The BJP may not have gained many seats in Telangana, but, the party doubled its vote share here which can again make the Congress nervous. The Congress leadership may be pretending joy and jubilation over the victory in Telangana to boost the sagging morale of their cadres that they are not completely wiped out, but, privately Congress leaders must be haunted by fear of the return of the ‘Modi Raj’.

In less than six months, the parliamentary elections are scheduled for the next year and the Hindi heartland has sent heartbreaking news to the Congress that there is no credible alternative to Modi in Indian politics. In all these states Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had heavily campaigned offering freebies, guarantees, and promising caste-based census to spoil BJP’s OBC vote bank and going hammer and tongs against the BJP in general and Modi in particular.

People trust the ‘Modi Ki Guarantee' more than the glib of Gandhis. The Congress long struggling to project Rahul Gandhi at par with Modi as the only PM material of the opposition block, had believed that the assembly election results would turn the tide in its favour. The BJP earlier had won Gujarat and Tripura but it suffered defeats in Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh. Modi and Shah were aware that ahead of the parliamentary polls, the BJP needed victories to create momentum.

The Congress, on the other hand, was desperate to win a couple of states to maintain an upper hand and play a big brother role during the seat-sharing exercise among allies of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc. Many poll pundits believe that the election results will have an impact on the templates and future course of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc and all of a sudden it lost the edge against the BJP and the NDA.

How Narendra Modi and Amit Shah snatched victory for the BJP

The victory of the BJP is the combination of the amazing popularity and credibility of Modi and the careful electoral strategy of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. In 2018, the BJP lost Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh to the Congress. However, the BJP later formed the government in Madhya Pradesh following a split in the Congress legislative fold.

Most of the political experts believed and even announced that Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will go with the Congress whereas Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot will barricade the advance of the BJP in Rajasthan. There was an obvious anti-incumbency wave against Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the BJP’s Chief Minister in Madhya Pradesh.

In Chhattisgarh, Chief Minister Bhupesh Bahgel consolidated the position of the Congress. Here the tandem of Modi-Shah stepped in, galvanized the party and the organizational structure and peppered in the poll campaign. The BJP ruled Madhya Pradesh for two decades except for a gap of 15 months when Kamal Nath-led Congress was in power. The BJP correctly gauged the fatigue factor against Chouhan hence systemically pushing him in the background during the campaigning. It is evident from the fact that Chouhan was not very active during the party’s Jan Ashirwad Yatra.

Instead of projecting Chouhan as the CM face, the party fielded several MPs including Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar to send a message to voters that the party has many alternative faces as CM in case the party wins. At the same time, the party kept focusing and talking about ‘Ladli Behna Yojana’, the social welfare scheme launched by Chouhan which is popular among women.

 “The very presence and involvement of Modi and Shah energized cadres and our micromanagement was far better. There was a motivation for us. Irrespective of what national media was predicting about the poll we were confident,” said a middle-ranking BJP leader who was involved in the campaigning in Madhya Pradesh. For instance, on the day of the polling when over 90 percent booth committee of the BJP became active the moment the polling started, Congress was not able to activate its local workers. To many, the Congress under the leadership of Baghel appeared invincible in Chhattisgarh, the reason because of the five years of inertness of the state unit of the BJP. “I don’t know who are they who declared the Congress unconquerable. The ground reality the mood of the people was clearly against the misrule of the Congress. We fought against crime, corruption, conversion, and naxalism which witnessed a meteoric rise during the regime of Baghel,” BJP national spokesperson Dr Ajay Alok differed while talking to NAI.

He said that the BJP got overwhelming support from the tribal and all other sections of the society and the results have once again confirmed that people have an unquestionable faith in Modi. Like Madhya Pradesh, the BJP projected nobody as the CM face of the party. The Congress campaigned about its welfare schemes stating that they spent Rs 1.75 lakh crore on it. The BJP promised cooking gas cylinders at Rs 500 for poor families and Rs 12,000 per year of financial assistance to married women.

The BJP raised the issue of massive corruption including liquor, coal scams, alleged involvement of Baghel in the Mahadev App scam and scams in welfare projects. Corruption became the main arsenal of the BJP to the extent that the BJP launched the ‘Bhu Pay Karo’ campaign which pushed the Congress on the back foot. In Rajasthan, the BJP fought with Ashok Gehlot who knows the magic of political maneuvering. The BJP focused on the rising crime graph against women and Dalits, rampant corruption, and appeasement of minorities by the Gehlot government.

The issue of minority appeasement worked well for the BJP in Rajasthan which has over 90% Hindu population. The Congress remained a divided house in Rajasthan due to the open difference between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot.  Pilot. The election results have suggested that there is no alternative to the Modi-led NDA government, at least for the time being.