The results of the Lok Sabha elections 2024 are more of an embarrassment than a success for the top leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It got a face-saving win, the threat of being thrown out of power was somehow averted and many questions remain, indicating the need for deep introspection. This situation was uncomfortable for the BJP, which had undisputed dominance over the country for a decade.
The only good thing was that the party was able to try its best to present itself as normal. The result was that the pictures coming from the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi could somehow be shown as normal and happy. After all, Narendra Modi created a new history by getting a third consecutive term. But amidst these smiles, tension and fatigue was clearly visible on two faces – one was Modi’s ‘Chanakya’ Amit Shah and the other was party president J.P. Nadda. They were constantly busy in discussions behind the scenes.
So that such potential partners can be explored whose friendship can ensure the stability of Modi 3.0. This can be just the beginning of a long exercise, because for the first time in a decade, BJP itself has fallen short of absolute majority. And to run the government, it will have to depend on the support of other parties.
In this bargaining situation, the BJP will have to adopt a softer stance and overall make its language more flexible. However, PM Modi has already prepared himself for this. Just an evening before, at the party headquarters, he refrained from mentioning anything like ‘Modi government’. It can be said that in a way he tried to indicate that he is no longer putting much emphasis on his office or the government.
Instead, the mention of ‘NDA government’ is indicative of a liberal approach to the coalition. And, this is right too, because the formation and sustainability of the Modi 3.0 government will largely depend on the stand of the allies. N. Chandrababu Naidu, who is going to take over as the Chief Minister in Andhra Pradesh, has added 16 MPs. On the other hand, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s party has 12 MPs. Even Eknath Shinde, who became the Chief Minister of Maharashtra due to the political chessboard of the BJP, has brought seven members.
In total, these 35 MPs, along with BJP’s 240 MPs, take the Modi government beyond the figure of 272 for a simple majority. With the rest of the 20 members, the NDA’s total figure has reached 292, which includes Chirag Paswan’s five MPs along with members of various smaller parties. If the BJP has forgotten to follow coalition dharma generously due to lack of need during the previous tenures, then it may need to learn from old veterans like Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Strict observers will be present at the center and state levels for review.
This situation has arisen because contrary to internal estimates, the BJP suffered a crushing defeat in its major strongholds – UP (seats reduced from 62 to 33), Rajasthan (14 instead of all 25) and Haryana (only 5 instead of all 10). Not only this, the loss of 63 seats in the major battleground Maharashtra (from 23 to 9) and buffer zone West Bengal (from 18 to 12) can prove to be a factor affecting the future.
While the BJP’s performance in old strongholds like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka helped reduce electoral losses, some states also infused new energy – Odisha (winning 19 out of 21 seats and a majority in the state assembly), a historic start in Kerala, victory on eight seats in Telangana and a huge jump in vote share in Tamil Nadu and Punjab could give the party a big advantage in the future.
This success, the result of a long-drawn-out exercise and hard work, will serve to boost the morale of the party workers at a time when there is a sense of frustration within the party due to lack of expected results. Amidst all this, Modi, the first prime minister to win for three consecutive terms after Nehru, is starting a new term in which he will need to strike a balance far more than he had anticipated. Since the most ambitious allies have already started demanding a bigger share in the central government and more central funds for their states, the BJP will need to implement its slogan of ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ to run the government.
Over the past decade, the BJP has built an image of a ruthless electoral machine that is always on the move, never tiring, and when it writes its own script, it creates and erases its own templates like a giant self-learning algorithm. This time, the computer is signalling the need for a reboot or restart. The error messages that activists tried to convey included a policy of “importing” people in bulk and free of cost, and trusting and giving positions to these importees over old loyalists.
This has happened time and again and again, and this has also happened in the unfortunate selection of candidates. In a private conversation, a senior BJP leader gave the example of Rahul Kaswan, a two-time MP from Churu in Rajasthan, whose family has been associated with the BJP for generations but the leadership ignored him and cut his ticket. Kaswan went to the Congress and won Churu by 72,737 votes.
The list of states was also full of arbitrary choices that left the old guard feeling unnecessary and disheartened. Even the preference for turncoats to form governments in states deepened the frustration. In the last decade, the BJP has changed all its chief ministers, replacing some with lesser-known politicians. Bhajan Lal Sharma of Rajasthan is a unique example – the BJP leadership marginalised several big leaders, including two-time popular chief minister Vasundhara Raje, by choosing his name in the draw.
Old wounds were reopened when Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal dramatically claimed during the election campaign that the BJP might remove Yogi Adityanath in UP after the Lok Sabha elections, in an attempt to create confusion among party workers and Yogi loyalists. A section of the party complains that Yogi was not fully utilised during the campaign and his recommendations were ignored.
Workers and senior leaders point out how lightweights were inducted into key party bodies like the parliamentary board and the election committee. These were people with no established electoral history or mass base, window-dressers who had no say in decisions. Even feedback did not help: the BJP leadership did not pay heed to good suggestions from grassroots people, preferring instead the laptop brains of hired professional agencies and their officials.
The centralisation of decision-making was such that several chief ministers and state presidents are upset that their feedback on local anti-incumbency against the MP was not taken into account. A senior BJP leader says, “Empowered and enthusiastic workers are necessary to counter the grassroots campaign and bring loyal and potential voters to the polling booths.” After all this, Modi’s war cry of 400 also backfired and proved costly. Already disgruntled workers took it too seriously and stayed away during the campaign.
Apart from being internally weak, the BJP also suffered the consequences of its core voters getting dispersed – Jats were disgruntled in the Green Revolution belt; Rajputs were unhappy in states like UP, Rajasthan and Gujarat; a different kind of restlessness was visible among the Marathas; and there was a sense of disappointment among the youth in low-growth states like UP and Bihar.
This same voter class had cast millions of votes in favour of BJP in the recent elections, and had stood firmly with Modi for the last decade, trusting in the slogans of nationalism and development. Here, the result of the feedback process being disrupted was also clearly visible. What were the reasons that kept fuelling this resentment? Increasing aspirations for government jobs, apprehensions arising over the reservation policy and the continuous derailment of the agricultural economy.
In the last week of February, exams for recruitment/promotion of constables in UP were cancelled after allegations of paper leaks surfaced again – the previous week, around 48.2 lakh candidates had appeared for the exam for 60,244 posts. The youth’s anger resulted in a change in caste equations. The non-Jatav Dalit class, which the BJP had tried hard to woo, switched sides and rallied behind the India Bloc; even the Jatavs, a reliable vote bank of the BSP, switched allegiances.
If we talk about the entire Dalit community, it took the narrative of the Constitution being in danger very seriously, their reaction was further fueled by the overconfident candidates of the BJP. At the same time, the opposition also left no stone unturned to capitalize on this issue. The non-Yadav OBCs found it appropriate to vote on the basis of socio-economic scenario rather than caste arithmetic. Not only this, the displeasure of Thakurs and the dilemma of Brahmins under the Yogi regime also affected the core vote bank of the BJP. This is the reason why its vote share declined by 8.6 percent and the party had to suffer a loss of 29 seats including Ayodhya.
On the other hand, the farmers’ unions of Punjab once again started marching towards Delhi. Their demand was that the promises made at the time of ending the 13-month siege of the national capital in 2020-21 should be fulfilled. The Shambhu and Khanauri borders between Punjab and Haryana once again became witnesses to the farmers’ anger and government repression, where a different narrative was born due to the firing of tear gas shells and nails being hammered on the roads.
The protesting farmers left no stone unturned in targeting BJP candidates in western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan, leading to growing resentment against the BJP among the Jats. At the same time, the new reservation law passed in Maharashtra in early March to placate the agitating Marathas angered other OBC groups, especially the related Kunbi community. In fact, they feared a dent in their quota.
As a result, the NDA, which dominated the cotton sector in 2014-2019, had to face defeat in Vidarbha this time. In fact, the angry Kunbi community rallied in favor of the opposition alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi, which was already in a strong position with the support of Dalits and Muslims. Only Nitin Gadkari and two other candidates were able to escape their wrath. The quota lollipop could not calm the anger of the Marathas.
new ray of light
However, Odisha has offered a new ray of hope for the BJP, where decades of effort resulted in victory in 78 assembly seats. For the first time, a state on the east coast will have its own chief minister. The BJP will also be part of the new government in Andhra Pradesh along with its allies TDP and Pawan Kalyan’s Janasena Party. In Telangana, it has won eight seats with a vote share increase of 15.4 per cent. Punjab and Tamil Nadu are two states that have been indifferent to the BJP’s Hindutva narrative and the party managed to get more votes than its traditional allies here despite contesting without them.
In Punjab, it got 18.5 percent votes with a lead in 24 assembly constituencies, while in Tamil Nadu, the vote share increased by 7.6 percent. Amidst all this, the biggest headache for the party is the assembly elections to be held later this year in Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. These are all states where the BJP has lost both its seats and vote share. There is still a lot left to think about, but the party will have to take some immediate steps in view of these elections.