Chinks In The Armour

A weakened NDA and a united opposition may upset the BJP applecart in 2019

- Pratul Sharma

After the winter chill, it’s the time for the spring churn. And, the first shoots of change in the political landscape have begun to show. In fact, the first two weeks of March have been so eventful that they may have set the tone for the rest of the year.

From an impressive win in Tripura to a humiliating loss in the Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Araria, the pendulum appears to have swung fast for the BJP. At the heart of this change are the alliances. In Tripura, it was the BJP’s alliance with the tribal party, Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura, which made the difference when the votes were counted. In Gorakhpur and Phulpur, an ‘unlikely’ alliance between the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan SamajParty defeated the BJP. In the Araria constituency in Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal retained the seat defeating the BJP, signalling that Lalu Prasad’s Muslim-Yadav vote bank is intact.

The BJP had held the Gorakhpur seat since 1989, first with Mahant Avaidyanath and then his disciple Yogi Adityanath. The seat was vacated by Adityanath when he became chief minister a year ago. Avaidyanath’s guru Digvijaynath also held the seat from 1967 to 1971. The BJP won the Phulpur constituency, which was first represented by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1952, for the first time in 2014. Keshav Prasad Maurya vacated the seat to become deputy chief minister. The results have shown that a combined dalit-Yadav-Muslim vote bank can wreck the BJP’s arithmetic, and have set ground for a firmer handshake between Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav.

The BJP has not won a single Lok Sabha bypoll in a year, even though it has been winning state after state. Five seats in the Lok Sabha are currently vacant.