Editorial: Dark portents for Modi government

The results of 13 Assembly byelections held last week confirm the nationwide erosion of voter support for the BJP. Much as Prime Minister Modi tries to paint his Pyrrhic victory in the recent Lok Sabha election as an unprecedented triumph for himself, these straws in the wind from seven disparate states all suggest one inference: The new NDA regime in power in New Delhi shall not have a day’s honeymoon and its execution of the flimsy mandate given to it is fated to be laboured and fraught every inch of the way.

The 13 constituencies that went to the polls were spread over Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal. The opposition INDIA bloc won 10 of these seats, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) taking four in West Bengal with consummate ease, the Congress bagging two seats each in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the DMK and Aam Aadmi Party one each in Tamil Nadu and Punjab respectively. The BJP struggled to win one seat in Madhya Pradesh and another in Himachal. An Independent won in Bihar.

It is true that Assembly byelections are dominated by local issues and their results are therefore not an accurate measure of the performance of the federal government. But, taken together, they contain important pointers to the state of play in national politics. One point that comes out strongly from these results is the emphatic repudiation by voters of the BJP’s Machiavellian tactics of luring away elected representatives from other parties. In Badrinath in Uttarakhand, Jalandhar in Punjab and Dehra and Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh, people kicked out candidates that had sold themselves in the Operation Lotus market.

The Congress’ victory in Badrinath is significant for another reason. It is one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage centres and a part of the Char Dham. The saffron party’s loss in this seat, together with its astounding defeat in Faizabad, home to the ‘bhavya Ram mandir’ in Ayodhya, in the recent Lok Sabha election, amounts to a stinging rejection of the notion that the BJP has a proprietary claim to the Hindu vote bank. Voters clearly do not agree that it is the party of god and will not exempt it from having to deliver on its earthly pledges.

The opposition victories in Ayodhya and Badrinath underscore the electorate’s nuanced approach to religious and secular issues. Voters do not have a monolithic view of Hindu identity and are willing to explore alternative political options on secular matters. The INDIA alliance is quite justified in exploring this chink in the BJP’s armour. In this, Rahul Gandhi has taken the lead, using potent cultural symbols such as the image of Lord Shiva in an abhaya hasta mudra, to illustrate the BJP’s departure from its self-claimed principles. It’s a major setback to the saffron party that no less an eminence than the Puri Shankaracharya has spoken out in support of the Leader of the Opposition.

Challenges to the stability of Narendra Modi’s coalition government are only likely to get more acute in the days ahead. Soon, more byelections have to be scheduled to replace incumbents who won the election to the Lok Sabha. Assembly elections will be due in a few months in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand and in Bihar next year. Clearly, it’s game on, and the portents are dark for the BJP.