Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Credit: PTI Photo
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's switch from the sober and inclusive language for the world stage to street-fighter rhetoric in the last few days, marks the formal onset of election season in India. Legislative elections are due in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Mizoram, and Telangana in November-December.
Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are already holding political rallies. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been ahead of others in releasing the list of its candidates in Madhya Pradesh. The inclusion of sitting MPs, ministers, and central party functionaries in this list has been read by some political observers as a sign of the BJP’s nervousness in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. That is a naïve conclusion. Rather it is a sign of election preparation to ensure that the BJP does not have to repeat the defections from the Congress as it had to do in 2018 to come to power. This time around it is trying to ensure a clear majority from the start.
The BJP’s early list is mainly for seats lost by the party in the 2018 assembly elections. It will get a head start and more time than its political adversaries for mass contact and campaigning.
The big guns who have been fielded in the legislative election so far, with some exceptions, have been given those assembly segments in their Lok Sabha constituencies where the BJP had lost. Thus, Union Food Processing Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, MP from Morena, is being fielded from Dimani assembly segment of Morena Lok Sabha seat, which the BJP lost by about 18,500 votes. Ganesh Singh, MP from Satna, is being fielded from Satna assembly constituency, which the BJP lost by about 12,500 votes. Faggan Singh Kulaste, MP from Mandla, is contesting from Niwas assembly segment where the BJP’s margin of loss was 28,300 votes. Rakesh Singh, MP from Jabalpur, has been sent to Jabalpur West assembly segment, which the BJP lost by 18,700 votes.
Minister of State Prahalad Patel, MP from Damoh, has been asked to contest from Narsingpur (Narsingpur Lok Sabha constituency), which the BJP had won by 14,900 votes. Udaypratap Singh, MP from Hoshangabad, has been asked to contest from Gadarwara (Narsingpur Lok Sabha constituency), which the BJP lost by 15,400 votes.
Riti Pathak, MP from Sidhi, has been fielded from Sidhi assembly segment which the BJP had won and from which the BJP’s Kedar Nath Shukla has had to be dropped because one of his supporters was named in an incident involving urinating on a hapless tribal man. The other bigwig who says he was taken by surprise on being fielded from Indore-1 assembly segment is the national general secretary of the BJP, Kailash Vijayvargiya. This seat was won by the Congress in 2018 by 8,200 votes. Vijayvargiya is a veteran leader from Indore who has been its mayor and a six-time MLA. His son Aakash Vijayvargiya is the MLA from Indore-3.
Such careful planning and selection of candidates is not a sign of nervousness, but preparation to come on top.
Fielding MPs and a national general secretary for the assembly elections will lift the party’s campaign. They will bring their own material resources and political capital to the campaign in addition to the party’s resources. Their political future is at stake. Their campaigning would be expected to have a positive fallout in the adjoining assembly segments as well.
The political ambitions of the big guns will also be energised as by fielding them the BJP is suggesting that the competition for chief ministership is wide open. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan may not be as unpopular as the Opposition would like to believe, but some fatigue with the same face for the better part of two decades is inevitable. The promise of a new patronage network developing around a new leader will enthuse people lower down in the party who have been excluded from power till now, and subdue factionalism in the BJP’s Madhya Pradesh unit.
The BJP is replicating its Madhya Pradesh strategy in Rajasthan too. Reports suggest that Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, and MPs Rajyavardhan Rathore and Diya Kumari are likely to be asked to contest assembly polls. Shekhawat and Meghwal have long been considered potential chief ministerial candidates. They have often been used by the central BJP leadership to sideline former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, and by fielding them now a clear signal will be sent that should the party win a majority Raje will not be the Chief Minister. She had defied the central leadership when she was asked to move to the Centre in the early days of Modi’s first tenure in 2014, and had effectively burned her bridges with the current BJP leadership.
The BJP is playing a high stakes game in both Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Whether something similar will be attempted in Chhattisgarh also will become clear once the candidates for a majority of the constituencies are announced. The fortnight of ‘Pitra Paksha’ will begin from September 29 in the Hindu calendar, when auspicious announcements and programmes must be kept in abeyance. It is likely, therefore, that the list of BJP candidates might come before ‘Pitra Paksha’ though the election schedule may be announced afterwards, in mid-October.
All eyes will be on the cow-belt states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan as an indication of how the wind may blow in the 2024 general election. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has forecast that his party has a strong chance of winning Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana while the contest was “very close” in Rajasthan. Unless the Congress matches the BJP’s electoral strategy and its will to win, it could have another thing coming.
(Bharat Bhushan is a Delhi-based journalist)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.