Satraps Vs BJP, A Reboot

Big structural shifts in politics raise new challenges for regional parties ahead of 2024 polls

- Nalin Mehta

An easy assumption for those opposed to BJP is that the opposition only has to unite to beat the saffron electoral juggernaut. Such a coalition, forged in the brotherhood of anti-BJPism, for its proponents, would automatically beat BJP’s hegemony. After all, BJP, even at the height of its second sweep in 2019, won just over one-third of India’s voters (37.36% vote share). Cobble together the remaining two-thirds and Modi’s ascendance would be halted, it is argued. Voting in the presidential election has demonstrated, however, how flawed such diagnosis is.

With several regional parties breaking ranks to vote for NDA’s presidential candidate Draupadi Murmu, it is clear that anti-Modism by itself may not be enough to weld together an opposition alliance. As many as 50 political parties supported Murmu’s candidature. In contrast, 36 opposition parties supported Yashwant Sinha. Crucially, those in the Murmu camp included many non-NDA parties: Odisha’s BJD, Andhra Pradesh’s YSRCP, Mayawati’s BSP, Jharkhand’s JMM, and even Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction.

BJP’s gambit of fielding a tribal woman ensured that many parties found it difficult to overcome the optics of opposing such potent political demography. The governing party’s changing political DNA and its signalling to marginalised social groups complicated the pitch for those looking to oppose it on ideological grounds of Hindutva or anti-BJPism alone.