The dates for the coming round of assembly polls have been announced, culminating with result day on 3 December. There has been a lot of sound and fury regarding these polls already as three of the five states are in the North and will see a straight fight between the Congress and the BJP. And that is never boring. Plus it will have an impact on the national narrative in the run-up to the 2024 General Elections. What is interesting however is also the fact the way the Congress and the BJP are conducting the elections. Having had some pleasant surprises with its strategy in Himachal and Karnataka, the Congress is running a very localised campaign—giving a free hand to local leaders and local issues.
The Central leadership has been campaigning but it is a low-key campaign with the heavy lifting being done by Kamal Nath in Madhya Pradesh, Bhupesh Baghel in Chhattisgarh and Ashok Gehlot along with Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan. For instance, when some Congress leaders in Delhi supported Udhayanidhi Maran’s comments on sanata dharma, Kamal Nath was quick to ask them to tone down for his campaign is being run with a heavy dose of Hindutva.
Contrast this with the BJP’s campaign where no CM face is being projected, the merits of local leaders are being weighed against those of the nominees of the Centre, with many Union Ministers being asked to contest the state elections. The message is clear: this will be a Modi-centric battle and any win will be attributed to him, the spoils of which will go to a nominee of his choice and not the current stalwarts. The BJP strategy seems to be getting mixed results if you look at the C Voter poll conducted recently which gives the Congress a win in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and even Telangana while the BJP gets to sweep Rajasthan.
While this may or may not be accurate it does highlight trends and which way the election is poised, a month or so before the actual polling. If the survey is right then this would be very good news for the Congress which has been on a good wicket post Karnataka and Himachal. The Telangana win would be especially encouraging for that is a state where the Congress was almost written off a year ago, with the BJP poised to be the main Opposition party. But the Congress seems to have fought back and is certainly in the reckoning, if not poised to win. This would strengthen the Opposition’s hand and especially the Congress party’s own credibility within the I.N.D.I.A. bloc.
Why then is the BJP committing a sort of self-goal by not allowing its stalwarts to lead? Some say this is one way of fighting the tremendous anti-incumbency against veterans like Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh and Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan. Certainly changing the CM face has helped the BJP in Uttarakhand and Gujarat, so maybe Modi and Shah are reading something on the ground that the analysts have missed.
All in all, the firecrackers are going off right in time for the Diwali season and it is going to be a spectacular political battle with no one really able to predict the outcome for sure.