The BJP expanded its electoral footprint into newer geographies, including in Assam, capitalising on an anti-incumbency vote against the Congress, which received a drubbing on Thursday. National parties, however, had little to show for in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, which returned regional stalwarts Mamata Banerjee and J Jayalalithaa to power.

Results of the Assembly elections established the supremacy of the two strong women leaders — Banerjee and Jayalalithaa — who successfully fobbed off the combined strength of the Left-Congress combine in West Bengal and the DMK-Congress alliance in Tamil Nadu, respectively.

At the same time, the BJP with its allies, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), dislodged three-term Congress Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and was set to form its first ever government in Assam.

Late on Thursday, the BJP was just shy of the halfway mark on its own, scoring as many as 60 seats in the 126-member Assam Assembly. From the last Assembly elections in 2011, when the BJP secured six seats and 11.7 per cent of the vote share, it was a stupendous gain to 61 seats and 29.5 per cent vote share. Its allies AGP and BPF were on their way to win 14 and 12 seats, respectively, taking the NDA’s cumulative tally to 87 seats in the 126-member Assembly.

By losing the States of Kerala and Assam to the Left front and the BJP, respectively, the Congress has shrunk its command to five small States and Karnataka. The principal opposition party now effectively governs less than 6 per cent of India, prompting a short response from Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who declared that it was time for the Grand Old Party to “introspect”.

“We will introspect into the reasons for our loss and will rededicate ourselves to the service of the people,” the Congress President said in a statement.

At the same time, gaining a foothold in the biggest State in the North-East and increasing its vote share in Kerala and West Bengal since the last Assembly elections, spurred celebrations in the BJP’s Delhi headquarters, where the top leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President Amit Shah, met late in the night for a parliament board.

“Our workers and organisation leaders have strengthened the BJP’s foundations from Kerala to Kashmir and from Kachch to Kamrup,” said an elated Amit Shah while addressing a press conference.

In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) in fact improved upon its performance since the last elections in 2011 in terms of seats even as it dropped a few percentage points in vote share. The TMC had won 50.15 per cent vote share and 184 seats in 2011. In the results and trends compiled till this copy went to print, the party seemed set to win 211 seats and 44.9 per cent vote share.

Jayalalithaa led the AIADMK to a second successive victory, a record in the southern State which tends to change the incumbent every five years. The party scored an impressive 134 seats and 40.8 per cent vote share in the 234-member Assembly. In 2011, when the AIADMK headed an alliance that included the DMDK, the party won in 150 seats and secured a 38.4 per cent vote share.

The results on Thursday further established this pattern that emerged from the Congress losing to the BJP in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh in 2014 and continued with its staggering defeat in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP’s advance in the subsequent elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand was interrupted only by the debutant Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi and the combined might of Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav whom, in the description of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, the Congress joined only as a “tail-ender”.

The BJP brass asserted that the election results are a referendum on the policies adopted by the Prime Minister in the last two years. Party President Amit Shah, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and the Prime Minister himself described the results as a stamp of “people’s approval” on the BJP’s “efforts to transform lives”.

“Some people are as surprised by the BJP’s victory in Assam as they were with the formation of a BJP-alliance government in Jammu and Kashmir. These results prove that the BJP’s development ideology and our efforts to transform ordinary people’s lives have been appreciated and accepted by the people,” Modi told party workers.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW