Brace for a long election season

With the Election Commission’s announcement of a three-week-long poll schedule next month, the stage is set for Assembly elections in five states. The elections are important for each of the five states because the outcome will decide the governance and politics of the respective state for the next five years. Assembly elections are more important for the people of a state than parliamentary elections, because the state government is closer to them and has greater impact on their lives than the central government. Though there have been cases of subversion of the people’s will, as it happened in Madhya Pradesh in 2020, these elections are important exercises in constitutional and political federalism, which is a key idea of democratic governance. The five states — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram — will go to the polls between November 7 and November 30 and the counting of votes will take place on December 3. 

The people in most of these states, as in others, have voted differently in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, but there is a temptation to find clues to the larger national political mood from the outcomes in these states. These are even considered as trailers or semifinals for the general elections in 2024. This may not be completely wrong, because the states where the elections are being held cover a large area and represent about one-sixth of the country’s voters. In three states, there is practically a direct contest between the BJP and the Congress and in another, Telangana, the main fight may be between BRS and Congress, though the BJP is also in the ring. Mizoram is an outlier where the contest is between the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) and a new political formation, Zoram People’s Movement, but Congress has a good presence in many seats. 

For the Congress, which had won Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in the last elections, it is important to win the three states again. It has a new central leadership under Mallikarjun Kharge, a refashioned leader in Rahul Gandhi, a record, and fresh promises, of welfarist measures, and a new campaign issue in caste census. The party has devolved more electoral responsibilities to its state units but faces problems related to factionalism, markedly in Rajasthan. The BJP will rely on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s image and the central government’s performance and promises. It has leadership and organisational problems at the state level, with Vasundhara Raje Scindia in Rajasthan and Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh pushed into the shadows. The elections will also mark the first outing for the new Opposition grouping INDIA, though only one of its constituents, the Congress, is mainly in the fray.