Polls Apart

Since assembly elections are fought on area-specific issues it has a limited influence in shaping the agenda of the General Elections in 2024

THE labelling of the ongoing polls in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram as a semi-final match between the BJP and the Congress seems to be an overstatement, as the election verdicts in 2018 in these states did not have a linear impact on the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. In the 2013 assembly elections, the Congress lost four of the five states, and it recorded its worst defeat in the national elections in 2014. On the contrary, in 2018, it won three of the five provincial polls, raising hopes for a big comeback, but it once again received a huge drubbing at the hands of the saffron party in the 2019 elections. Hence, the ‘nomenclating’ of elections in the five states as a semi-final competition between the two main national parties is full of naivety, as state and national hustings are tangentially different in the size of the electorate, political issues, local nuances and interactive modes between politics and citizens. Assembly elections are political party contests—localised referendums on incumbency and governance variables like law and order, social justice initiatives and provincial programmes for targeted beneficiaries.