Advantage Modi

The logic of power at the Centre is that it creates the resources necessary for building grand coalitions of interests and office-seeking aspirations. Among the existing political players in India, no one is better placed to comprehend this than the all-encompassing umbrella party that the Congress once was. So, when the All India Congress Committee carps about the BJP’s “blind quest for power” for its gumption to form a government in Meghalaya with just two MLAs, it is safe to interpret it as a case of sour grapes. The just-concluded Assembly elections in the three north-eastern states of Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya signify a big shift in momentum once again in favour of the BJP. Just when the Opposition was getting the upper hand with the absconding diamantaire Nirav Modi’s Davos picture with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP’s close shave in Gujarat, followed by two big by-election losses in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the ruling party has got its mojo back. Besides re-establishing its electoral supremacy, the poll results literally exemplify party president Amit Shah’s goal of a “Congress-mukt Bharat”. That he managed to demolish the last bastion of the Left in Tripura only adds to his invincibility as a political strategist. As the Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee pointed out, besides the BJP’s victory, the poll results suggest an “abject surrender” by the Congress. That the Congress president Rahul Gandhi just happened to be holidaying in Italy on a day that Modi and Shah were addressing party workers and conducting late-night parleys has further embellished the narrative that the Congress is not a serious player any more.

The numbers prove that the BJP’s dramatic rise has been mostly at the expense of the Congress. From just one seat in Nagaland with a vote-share of 1.75 per cent in the 2013 Assembly polls, the BJP won 12 seats with a vote-share of 15.3 per cent this time. Besides the Naga People’s Front which dropped about 11 seats, the real loser in the State was the Congress. Not only did it fail to open its account, the Congress’s vote-share shrank from 24.39 per cent in 2013 to 2.1 per cent. Similarly, in the Left citadel of Tripura, the ruling party’s victory with 35 seats and a staggering 43 per cent of the vote-share cannot be fully understood without relating it to 2013 when the BJP had not won a single seat and its vote-share stood at a mere 1.54 per cent. The gain is clearly at the Congress’s expense with the latter’s vote-share shrinking from 36.53 per cent in 2013 to a minuscule 1.8 per cent this time round.

Shah’s pointman in the North-East, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has done the rest by edging the Congress out even in Meghalaya where the BJP won only two seats and the Congress 21. The Congress’s structural annihilation could not have been more apparent. It’s Advantage Modi and BJP once again.

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