Modi's BJP decimates rivals, leaving INDIA alliance in tatters

Laziness and lack of imagination extract the heaviest price in politics simply because the rewards are also outsize.

Voters punish you for arrogance, as Arvind Kejriwal found out, and nimble, responsive politics is rewarded. In the big battle of 2024, voters punished Prime Minister Narendra Modi by reducing the BJP’s numbers to 240 seats and making him dependent upon allied support for the first time, unlike his first two terms.

The Congress got 99 seats, and Rahul Gandhi finally got the tag of Leader of Opposition, which he and the Congress had been craving for a while as a sign of his legitimacy and coming of age as a politician.

What ensued? The Congress and Gandhi, who calls all the shots in the party, slipped back into the terminal sloth that is the new party style, launching inane personal attacks on Modi and his ties to billionaire cronies.

Instead of finally building up the shambolic party organisation, Gandhi and his palace coterie spent all their time ensuring that winning candidates in the Maharashtra and Haryana elections had the going made tough for them, while the chronic infighting and unmerited ambition that is the bane of the Congress took centre stage.

Gandhi, whose advisers all come from a particular southern state — truly strange for a political party that claims an all-India footprint and knows that unless it revives in the North of India, it will never enjoy power in Delhi — just sat around and waited for victories to fall in their laps.

Maharashtra and Haryana, seen as sure-shot wins for the opposition INDIA alliance, were frittered away in a burst of overconfidence, treating them as victories before even a vote had been cast.

The BJP, on the other hand, went swiftly back to the drawing board. Modi’s BJP humbly mended its rocky relationship with the mother ship, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which was the BJP’s boots on the ground and had virtually sat out the big fight of 2024 because of an ill-judged comment by J P Nadda, BJP President, who publicly said that the BJP didn’t need the RSS anymore.

It is not widely known, but Nadda apologised to Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, and the Sangh top brass, and Modi ensured that the Sangh and the BJP were on the same page and playbook. The result was that the RSS cadres enthusiastically joined the campaigns in Maharashtra and Haryana and won the elections for the BJP.

The BJP’s Delhi win is the trifecta Modi craved and has ensured that he is now the maximalist political leader of the party and country that he was in his first two terms. Anecdotal evidence in Delhi suggests that the BJP left no stone unturned, despite having a lacklustre state leadership, to pull off a win after 27 years in the wilderness.

Now contrast that with the much-hyped INDIA alliance, which, apart from a catchy name, has literally nothing to show for it. As all of North India now turns saffron, or BJP-ruled, with the exception of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Jharkhand, the top leadership of the opposition is not fussed, feeling secure in their own citadels.

Is the security merited?

Let me prove to you why it is not. The INDIA alliance is dead, principally because state leaders like Arvind Kejriwal and Mamata Banerjee have a visceral hostility to the Congress, having come to power by cannibalising the Congress vote share.

Kejriwal insisted on contesting the Gujarat, Goa, Haryana, and Punjab elections without any alliance with the Congress. The Congress came up with its third dud in the Delhi elections but ended Kejriwal’s run of power — revenge served cold for his duplicity and arrogance.

Now he will see how quickly the BJP will divest him of Punjab, a state where the AAP is also in power. Kejriwal will soon be back in jail, and his party in Punjab and Delhi will split, joining the BJP. The too-clever-by-half lack of ideology that he crowed about will come back to bite him.

Authoritative sources in the BJP say that, with the next state elections in Bihar, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Bengal due only next year, the full focus and might of the BJP will now turn to unseating Banerjee from her West Bengal citadel. Banerjee, whose biggest rival in the state is the BJP, might soon regret how thoroughly she ensured the decimation of the Congress and the Left in the state.

The opposition, even in the upcoming elections, will continue their squabbles without getting their act together. In Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray’s wing of the Shiv Sena is contemplating a return to base with the BJP, having understood that their core voters were unable to digest their alliance with the Congress.

Thackeray will soon have his political strength tested as he fights with his back to the wall for political survival in the Brihanmumbai elections.

As Modi gets his full political mojo back, expect the BJP to dominate the politics of India. Our opposition is napping — never good for democracy and its institutions.