The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and the Congress-led INDIA bloc are about to engage in a significant face-off, not only for the forthcoming Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand but also in the byelections to be held in mid-November in 48 Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats across 15 States. The byelection were necessitated as several State legislators got elected to Parliament in April-June this year. Some others passed away while holding office.

The byelections take place in the backdrop of the resurgence of the INDIA bloc in the Lok Sabha election, which can be primarily attributed to opposition unity. But then came the Congress’ setback in the Haryana Assembly election, setting the clock back on the collective achievements attained less than six months ago. Considered the vanguard of the opposition until recently, the Congress spurned seat adjustments with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Haryana. The strategy did not work and tested the tenacity of the INDIA bloc.

On October 9, a day after the Haryana election results were out, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav caused a stir by announcing party candidates for the Uttar Pradesh byelections. A visibly rattled Congress tried to bargain but given its weakened position after Haryana, it gave in. Indeed, it could not claim any moral high ground now. The SP had wanted to contest in a dozen seats in Haryana but eventually scaled down its demand to three. The Congress refused to concede even a single seat, and its leaders declared they would go it alone.

If there was a lesson in that fiasco, the Congress seemed oblivious of it as it failed to secure any alliance with INDIA bloc partners in Rajasthan. In Maharashtra and Jharkhand, too, INDIA bloc candidates are pitched against each other in “friendly fights”. The Left parties are contesting on their own in both States.

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Nine Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, seven in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four each in Bihar and Punjab, three in Karnataka, two each in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Sikkim and one each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Meghalaya and Uttarakhand are up for byelections. Wayanad in Kerala and Nanded in Maharashtra are the two parliamentary constituencies facing byelections. Wayanad is going to witness a high-profile electoral fight with Priyanka Gandhi contesting the seat vacated by her brother, Rahul Gandhi. The byelection at Nanded was necessitated by the death of Congress stalwart Vasantrao Chavan. The Congress is expected to win both seats comfortably.

Another high-profile contest will be the one for the Karhal Assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh where Tej Pratap Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav’s nephew and Laloo Prasad Yadav’s son-in-law, is one of the candidates.

In 24 of the Assembly seats facing byelections, the outgoing MLAs are either from the Congress or the BJP. In the rest, the incumbents are from regional parties that are part of either the NDA or INDIA. Eleven of the 15 States where byelections will be held are ruled by the NDA; the Congress, Trinamool Congress, AAP, and the Left Front are in power in the remaining four.

Byelections outcomes in Assembly seats are generally expected to swing in favour of the party in power, and voters are usually unlikely to upset the status quo. Yet, there might be a few surprises in store this time. In West Bengal, the Trinamool has a grip on five of the six seats going to poll, though the BJP was the runner-up in all five in the last Assembly election. The thing to watch out for is whether the R.G. Kar protests will impact the voting. INDIA bloc parties appear to have an edge in the four Assembly seats in Bihar, though the entry of Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party can skew things a bit, especially in seats where the margin of victory was low last time.

Lack of coordination among INDIA partners

The Assembly byelections outcomes are going to be politically significant. For instance, it could well be a learning experience for the Congress on building and retaining alliances. In Rajasthan, the Congress holds four of the seven seats going to polls; its INDIA bloc allies Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLTP) and Bhartiya Adivasi Party (BAP) hold one each at present, and so does the BJP. Unlike in Uttar Pradesh, where it declined to field candidates against the SP after some afterthought, in Rajasthan the Congress has nominated candidates in all seven seats. For the Lok Sabha election, it had an alliance with the RLTP and BAP. Congress leaders campaigned for their alliance partners and vice versa, and the strategy paid off. The Congress won as many as eight seats and other INDIA parties three in a State where the BJP had won all 25 seats in 2019. Inexplicably, the Congress has chosen to go it alone in the byelections.

The absence of its top State leaders in the campaigning for the byelections seems to reinforce the impression that the Congress is not serious about winning any of the seven seats. Both Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot were packed off to Maharashtra as senior party observers, leaving the task of leading the byelections campaign to State party president Govind Dotasra.

Relations between the two leaders are reportedly still far from amicable. “If Gehlot patches up with Pilot, he will likely lose his support within the party for taking Pilot’s side,” said a senior functionary in the State unit. There is apparently resentment, within both the BJP and the Congress, over the choice of candidates and promotion of dynastic politics. But the most important thing that has emerged about the byelections in Rajasthan is the lack of coordination between INDIA alliance partners.

Rajiv Gupta, a retired professor of sociology from Rajasthan University, said the Congress was not playing the role of an effective opposition. “It is not enough to issue statements. The party has to be seen on the ground, doing something. The BJP government has, in the last one year, undone so many good schemes of the previous government. It has not held good on its election manifesto promises. The number of sanctioned teaching posts in universities is huge. The government directly participates in all religious programmes as if that is the only form of democratic governance. It will deploy polarisation tactics in these byelections as it did in the Lok Sabha election. The Congress should protest aggressively and get its INDIA partners on board on this if it seriously considers taking on the BJP. The two top leaders should also work together as that message will then resonate below,” he said.

As for the BJP, it is a win-win even if it only retains the reserved seat of Salumber. Any improvement of its tally in the Assembly will appear to vindicate the choice of Bhajan Lal Sharma, a virtual political non-entity, as Chief Minister. The BJP central leadership handpicked Sharma, overruling the claims of satraps such as Vasundhra Raje and Rajendra Singh Rathore.

Poll postponement stirs up controversy

The upcoming byelections have not been free from controversy. The Election Commission, which had announced the byelections on October 15, altered the polling date in some States on November 4. It said it had received representations from political parties, mostly NDA constituents, and some social organisations, which did not want polling to be held on November 13 because of a religious festival around that time which would reduce voter participation. The EC postponed the byelections to November 20 in all the nine seats in Uttar Pradesh, all four in Punjab and in Kerala’s Palakkad. The SP, a critical player in the Uttar Pradesh byelections and supposedly holding an edge in most of the seats, cried foul. In a statement on X, Akhilesh Yadav said this was an “old trick to avert inevitable defeat”. The postponement gives all parties an extra week’s time to campaign.

The EC could have taken note of the festival before notifying the byelections dates on October 15. Once it had announced the date, it should have stuck to it. The postponement in as many as 14 seats, 10 days before the scheduled date, was not seen as conforming to decorum. In fact, the EC had rescheduled the Haryana election from October 1 to October 5 following a representation on similar lines from the BJP. Notably, in Haryana’s case, the BJP was the only party that made such a representation.

BJP falls backs on polarisation tactics

THE EC has once again failed to invoke the Model Code of Conduct with respect to speeches made by BJP leaders including the Prime Minister. In Jharkhand, communal and hate speeches pitching tribal people against minorities seem to be par for the course now. The idea seems to be to replicate the electoral success of Haryana. The strident appeal to oust “illegal immigrants”, the call to “save bread and daughters” (roti aur beti) and usher in a uniform civil code exempting the tribal population but not minorities are all part of the broad Hindu consolidation that the BJP seeks to achieve, one that would include tribal populations.

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All the old tricks are out of the bag, including divisive language that brands minorities as “ghuspathiye” (infiltrators) and the familiar bogey of a demographic threat to Hindus. With Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma leading the charge from the front, this has become the new catchword for the BJP in every election. The more insidious aspect of the BJP’s campaign is a call to “unite all Hindus” with the slogan of “Batenge to katenge” (divided, we will be slaughtered). This call for Hindu unity is not entirely new, but this time it is being aggressively pushed not only by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath but by the Prime Minister as well. Observers say this is in response to the Congress’ caste census demand and its successful campaign that the BJP will alter the Constitution if it attains a brute majority.

The attempt to drive a wedge between tribal people and minorities may not succeed in Jharkhand where the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha is aligned to a strong tribal identity. The BJP’s strategy in the State is in any case at odds with its attempts to engineer a pan-Hindu identity in the rest of the country. Chief Minister Hemant Soren has in the past called for a separate religious code for tribal people and emphasised that they are not Hindus. However, the trope of “illegal immigrants” does have strong emotive appeal. Unless it is countered effectively, it might resonate with voters in the States where byelections are being held.

The BJP takes every election, from the panchayat level upwards, seriously. It is time the opposition did, too.