State of BJP under-performance….

State of BJP underperformance….

The BJP has underperformed in the Maharashtra & Haryana 2019 state elections. Though they ended up being the single largest party and formed a fairly good alliance based government in Haryana, the same cannot be said about Maharashtra. Where even though they won on alliance, the post election Shiv Sena blues have set in and has made all the unnecessary but predictable whining threats.

            These things are regional politics and one should not read too much into these classic politicking. But the question should be only one and that is:

Why has BJP underperformed?

I never thought NDA would get 220 seats in Maharashtra and did not believe the exit polls prediction that they would get 70+ seats in Haryana either. This is because extrapolating lok sabha elections results on vidhana sabha elections is a stupid and lazy analysis. But I did expect BJP to win 130 seats in Maharashtra and 55+ seats in Haryana. In both states they lost around 20 seats and this has three reasons, namely: anti incumbency, economy and poor ticket distribution.

1. This is a continuation of 2017 (Guj) and 2018 (3 state) election cycle. The state governments have accumulated some anti incumbency and the economy is not pleasant either for the urban or the rural voter.
2. The actions by the central government in 2018 and 2019 February budgets acted like a big band aid or more like a pain killer, but it was never a solution or cure.
3. Unless the central BJP and the state BJP GOVERNMENTS come together and revive both the rural and urban economy, the underperformance in state elections will continue.
4. The anti-incumbency is mostly because of poor communication and bad handling of biased mainstream media. Unless BJP takes a stand and does major course correction this anti-incumbency irritant will persist.
5. Lastly, but an inexcusable reason for the underperformance is ticket distribution. Why does BJP feel the need to give tickets on any other factor other than winning ability? Answer is nepotism, corruption and arrogance.
6. BJP lost Bihar 2015 because of poor ticket distribution and opposition arithmetic. They would have lost regardless, but better ticket distribution would have made election much closer and Mahagatbhandan would have had a wafer thin victory. Some what similar thing happened in Guj 2017.
7. If BJP had given MLA tickets properly based on winning ability of the candidate, BJP would have easily won 10 extra seats each in both Haryana and Maharashtra.

This is a very much needed forewarning to BJP, Amit Shah and Narendra Modi.

1. Fix the communication department in both centre and state levels. Make the deviant anti BJP MSM fall in line by using covert actions.
2. Revive the economy (my previous blogs have most of the solutions); the law of diminishing results will catch up in the external Pakistan threat narrative. Good economy is always an evergreen narrative and everyone is impacted.
3. For Gods sake, please be pragmatic and ruthless in ticket distribution.

To win Jharkhand

Winning Jharkhand will not be easy and therefore BJP needs to do 4 things, namely:

1. Do a proper ground based, state level, localised issue centric election campaign. Communication should be based on doles, welfare schemes and prospective better living standards.
2. Pay attention to the biased MSM and make them go silent.
3. Survey all the constituencies and give tickets only based on winning ability of the candidate with respect to social factors.
4. Have a strong electorally all encompassing, arithmetically viable alliance pre election alliance. Very hard to beat electoral arithmetic, even poor performance sometimes gets over looked. Get AJSU, JVM (P), Jharkhand Party and every candidate who can win by himself on a particular seat.
5. My guess is that in the vidhana sabha election, Jharkhand will give a hung assembly result.
6. With proper precaution, BJP can avoid it.

New Delhi (UT) 2020

1. Winning a majority in Delhi assembly looks very difficult, regardless of what BJP does.
2. My guess is that unlike 2015, this time BJP will get around 20 seats and congress 10 seats. AAP will loose around 30 seats, but still have the numbers to form the government alone.
3. Unless BJP does economic reforms and have spectacular positive results within the next 5 months, one cannot see how they can form the government.

Consequences of underperformance by BJP.

BJP, in cricket terminology:

1. In August 2019, BJP was cruising towards a 360/0 score on the first day.
2. In October 2019, BJP is at 260/2, with 10 over’s left to play on day one.
3. That’s a drop in run rate and also loss of wickets due to careless batting.

For INC:

1. The horizontal splits and vertical splits are temporarily postponed.
2. Internal Fatigue will still continue to grow in INC. Some results will be seen soon enough.
3. End of the road for fake family soothsayers.