Let’s start with the second narrative first. The BJP lost the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat by a margin of around 55,000 votes, as the party’s two-time MP Lallu Singh lost to Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Awadhesh Prasad who since has been given a front-row seat on the opposition benches to rub it in the face of the BJP. The Opposition has called it as ‘Ayodhya ki Jeet’ and Rahul Gandhi has now said the Ram Janmabhoomi movement has been defeated in Ayodhya by the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) group in these polls.
Firstly, the seat is the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, and not Ayodhya. There are five assembly segments in this Lok Sabha seat, one of them being Ayodhya. And the BJP, in fact, secured more votes that the opposition in the Ayodhya assembly segment, while it lost in the other four. So Ayodhya did vote for the BJP. Also, this is not the first time that the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat has been lost by the BJP. Nirmal Khatri of the Congress had won it in 2009, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won it in 2004.
The Faizabad Lok Sabha, in fact, has always been closely contested and has a complex caste matrix of Dalits, OBCs and Muslims. After winning by 2.82 lakh votes in 2014 in the ‘Modi wave’, Lallu Singh won by only 65,000 votes in 2019 as the SP and Congress had contested separately and the latter polled around 54,000 votes. The anti-incumbency against Singh was visible then too. This time, the SP and Congress came together to pit local Dalit MLA Awadhesh Prasad against him.
The BJP committed the blunder of putting up Singh again and not changing its candidate, while Singh, with his statement that the “Constitution will be changed", made Dalit voters turn against him, contributing to Awadhesh’s win. Clearly, it has nothing to do with either the Ram Temple or the Ram Janmabhoomi movement as the BJP still polled more votes than the SP in Ayodhya assembly segment. Why it lost in three other assembly segments that it won in 2022 is, in fact, the BJP’s big concern.
MORAL DEFEAT?
A BJP insider drew an analogy to question the Congress claim that the BJP suffered a ‘moral defeat’ in these elections. “When Manmohan Singh returned to power in 2009 with 206 seats for the Congress, everyone said ‘Singh is King’. Then how can Modi coming back for a third term with 240 seats for the BJP be termed as a ‘moral defeat’? The Congress itself is just at 99 seats, far lesser that 145 seats it won in 2004 to form a coalition government," the BJP leader said.
With 233 MPs, the INDIA grouping is formidable, but far off from the majority mark of 272 seats in Parliament and won’t be able to dislodge the government, even if either of the two big NDA partners, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) (16 seats) or Janata Dal United (JDU) (12 seats) leaves the BJP’s hand. Former UPA Minister P Chidambaram, in his column with The Indian Express, wrote as much, saying that the “INDIA bloc is not in a position to defeat the government", adding that the JDU and TDP would bide their time for now.
In his detailed speech in Parliament in the Monsoon session, PM Narendra Modi pointed out that even the 99 seats that the Congress has won is largely due to its allies, as the seats mostly came from states where the Congress fought as a minor partner. Modi said that in straight contests with the BJP, the Congress strike rate was only 26%, but in states where they were junior partners, their strike rate was 50%. In 16 states where the Congress fought alone, its vote share had plunged.
In short, the PM said it was the Congress which needed to deeply self-introspect its loss in these elections instead of being delusional about a ‘moral victory’. But no one in the Congress has taken any responsibility for the third loss, and rather only point at the BJP dropping to 240 seats from 303 in the last term. Mistaking this setback for Modi as a decisive one could be fatal for the Congress. Modi has been known to make strong comebacks. One may see some big moves soon.
Comments
0 comment