Will BJP win 2019 Election?

       Will BJP win 2019 Election?

       The BJP’s loss in three Hindi heartland states and the drubbing it received in two others this month has left a deep scar on the party’s psyche is evident in the Bihar seat-sharing agreement finalized by party president Amit Shah on December 23, 2019 . The agreement, viewed as “virtual surrender” shows that the party’s desperation to set its house in order to the states that matter most to it in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, as the perception deepens that the party will not be able to repeat the fantastic performance of 2014.

          In this seat-sharing deal, the leader of BJP agreed it would be an equal partner to the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) and the two parties would contest 17^th no of  Lok Sabha seats each. The BJP won 22 out of the 30 seats it contested in the 2014 elections, even as the JD (U) had left it in the lurch. While this itself is being seen as the BJP bending over backwards to please the JD(U), what came as a rude shock to many even within the party was it granting a Rajya Sabha berth to Ram Vilas Paswan in addition to six Lok Sabha seats to his Lok Janshakti Party. This made the party’s surrender to caste politics more pronounced.

          After having surrendered to the Bihar partners, the BJP has sent a frantic signal to its estranged allies elsewhere. It is an invitation to the Shiv Sena to exact a heavy price for staying with the BJP in Maharashtra. The Sena has already declared its decision to go it alone in 2019 and has spent most of the past four years criticizing the Modi government and the BJP, despite being part of the government both at the Centre and in Maharashtra. The BJP needs the Shiv Sena to take on the combined strength of the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s NCP in Maharashtra. In the last polls, all these parties had contested separately.

          The Bihar arrangement also signals that the BJP has given up the hope of repeating the Modi wave and winning an absolute majority on its own in the 2019 elections, as it did in 2014. Nobody believes the BJP can repeat its 2014 performance in the Hindi-speaking states, where its core strength lies. It would be a fairytale if the BJP could win as many seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2019 as it did in 2014, for instance, even in the absence of a grand opposition combine. Yet, the party has not given up the hope of emerging as the biggest single party with 200 plus seats. The BJP is now fine-tuning its electoral strategy in that backdrop: to keep all its present allies anyhow to boost its appeal to even more regional allies, and then quickly form the next government.

          As the Modi halo slips, the BJP and its supporter is rediscovering the merits in coalition dharma, apart from the Ram Mandir.

Source: Economictimes