The round of assembly polls scheduled in November-December 2018 lay in the fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will see itself contesting against the Congress in four out of the five states; Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajastan and Mizoram.

In Telengana, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), seen by many as a potential ally for the BJP in the event of a hung parliament in May 2019, will fight for its survival against a grand alliance comprising the Congress, the CPI and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) joined in by the Telengana Jana Sena, headed by Prof. Kodandaram.

These state that go to polls, among them, send only a sixth of the Lok Sabha’s total strength. In other words, the number of Lok Sabha seats from the five states that go to poll to elect their state assemblies is only 83; only 3 more than the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies from Uttar Pradesh.

And yet, the outcome from these five will be important for the BJP as far as 2019 is concerned. The BJP had gathered 63 of its own and 11 from the TRS who supported Narendra Modi’s regime all the while since May 2014.

The Congress was at its weakest moment in three states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh – in 2014 and lost out quite a bit in Telengana too.

The party’s tally was just a couple from Madhya Pradesh, a lone win in Chattisgarh, a blank in Rajasthan and only two MPs from Telengana, whose creation was its doing! It was, in a sense, worse than its performance from these states in March 1977. That is another time and another dynamics.

A Different Picture

It looks like things are not the same now as they were in May 2014. The BJP is no longer riding a wave as it did then and the Congress that had looked to be sinking and too low on morale then does not appear so lost now.

Rahul Gandhi is older than he was in 2014 in the literal sense and a lot more political in the figurative sense. He has desisted from taking long intervals from politics ever since his impressive record in Gujarat (December 2017) and Karnataka (May 2018) and seems to be working at setting the party organisation in place and that too in time.

The Congress party in Rajasthan, with Sachin Pilot in the steering wheel, has resorted to the conventional agit-prop mode since many months and given the sharp rift within the BJP in the state, the incumbent regime looks a bit too bad shape to ensure that the Congress is stopped from forming the next government.

Even if one takes polls before elections by agencies with a fist-full of salt (not just the proverbial pinch), the Congress seems ahead. The same seems to be the message from Madhya Pradesh; the BJP has been ruling the state for long – 15 years – now and a repeat win is possible only if the opposition is non-existent.

The Congress, however, has a new life with Kamalnath having been anointed the leader. It may be recalled that Kamalnath had never lost an election since 1977 (and he won his seat in 1977 too on behalf of the Congress) and the same is true of Jyotiraditya Scindia. These two had won their seats even in the midst of the Modi wave in May 2014.

Chattisgarh seems one of the states where the Congress seems weakest among the states going to polls and that too for want of a leader; the party had lost most of its established and potential leaders in a landmine blast triggered by the Maoists. And there is no evidence of Ajit Jogi’s clout in the state, now in alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The Significance Of The Elections

That should bring us to ponder over the substantial impact that the election outcome from the four states – Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telengana – on the political mosaic of India in the months before May 2019.

The Congress certainly will do better than it did in November 2013 from these states. It is most certain that its vote percentage vis-à-vis May 2014 from these states will also go up substantially. It is even likely that it wrests power in some of these if not everywhere.

Herein, indeed, lies the importance of this round of assembly elections. The attempts that have been on and off since May 2018, after Rahul Gandhi ensured a non-BJP government by making HD Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal, will receive a new push both in the quantitative and qualitative sense.

It will be then that the political leaders outside of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will sit down in real earnest and discuss who will lead them against the BJP in May 2019. It will then be a Congress party, stronger than it is now and it was in May 2014.

Well. December 11, 2018, the day when the electronic voting machines (EVM) will be opened and the votes tallied, will mark the beginning of a discourse that will put things in place for May 2019.

V. Krishna Ananth is a Professor of History at SRM University, AP.

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First Published:Oct 8, 2018 5:41 PM IST