With the new year India has entered a breathless election cycle. 10 states are going to the polls along with a slew of Parliamentary by-polls in the coming months. Soon after, in May 2024, the BJP will complete a historic ten years in power. The ruling party will then battle it out at the hustings against Congress and regional parties to remain in government. But 2023 will be the year that sets the tone for the general elections, and will be keenly watched.
For better or worse, the complex and fractious general elections have been reduced in the public imagination to a contest of personalities. The first question which pundits expect to be answered then is whether PM Modi’s great
personal appeal will diminish after a decade in office, or if the teflon prime minister, having emerged unscathed from the COVID crisis, farmer protests, Chinese occupation of Indian territory and a host of other hot-ticket issues, will again steer the NDA to a rout of the opposition as he managed to do in 2014 and 2019. The other personality that will stand trial by fire is Rahul Gandhi, who is
currently on the northern leg of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, a walk from the southernmost tip of peninsular India to Srinagar in the Kashmir valley that supporters of the Congress claim has breathed new life into the down- and-out party and restored Gandhi’s much-maligned image. Though Congress leaders insist the Yatra is non-political, its impact will inevitably be gauged from the performance of the party in the states this year.
Alongside the two major national parties, many regional players are in the fray, many with ambitions of going national. Lok Panchayat looks at the states headed to the polls and the regional equations as they currently stand.
Rajasthan
The Ashok Gehlot government has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the past months. In-fighting appears endemic in both parties in Rajasthan, but the polls, expected in December, are not necessarily a race to the bottom for the state units of the Congress and the BJP. Some observers expect trouble for the Grand Old Party if Sachin Pilot, son of Rajesh Pilot and a leader of the state’s Gurjars is not given a greater role in the state. But the veteran Chief Minister does not seem to be in a hurry to give him one. The BJP too would do well to reach a compact between Vasundhararaje Scindia and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, two of the top opposition leaders in the state, in order to put up a united front against the Ashok Gehlot ministry, because Mr Gehlot, a time-tested Congressman, has not been idle. In 2022 he presented a budget that brought relief to government workers, introduced an urban employment guarantee scheme, and has been introducing a slew of welfare policies. Every measure will count
in the upcoming fight to retain the Congress’s slender lead in the state assembly.
Madhya Pradesh
The state witnessed a comedy of defections in 2020, with the Scindia faction of the state Congress unit breaking entirely to defect to the BJP. The Congress break-up brought down the Kamal Nath ministry and saw Shivraj Chouhan take office as CM. Congress turncoat Jyotiraditya Scindia now holds the Union ministries of Steel and Civil Aviation. The young Scindia follows his late father, the Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia, as Minister of Civil Aviation. In the 230-member MP state assembly, the BJP holds 130 seats. The Congress came to power with 114 in 2018, but got shrunk to its current 96 with the Scindia defection. Delhi is abuzz with talk of Chouhan, a four-term CM, being replaced with a younger CM face. While Chouhan’s popularity has decreased in the state, he remains the most important BJP leader. Any changes may then be effected after the elections in December. Meanwhile, Kamal Nath has made it clear that he is not going anywhere yet. Though Mr Nath has not been made the official CM candidate by the Congress, he will be leading the campaign in the state.
Karnataka
New Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge would take special interest in his home state Karnataka, where elections are expected in April or May. In 2018, the BJP became the single largest party in the 224-member house, but was thwarted in forming the government by the Congress-JDS com- bine under HD Kumaraswamy.
Horse-trading, however, snatched legislators away from the ruling coalition in 2019 and it was replaced by the BJP. Now, the incumbent CM Basavraj Bommai can expect stiff competition from the Congress and the JDS, as well as KCR’s Bharat Rashtra Samiti, which has entered the fray this year.
Lacklustre performance from the Bommai ministry will be compounded by corruption allegations to give a difficult electoral fight to the normally steamrolling BJP. The election will also be greatly impacted by the Vokkaliga-Lingayat reservation issue. Perhaps anticipating these hurdles, BJP’s Karnataka state president Nalin Kateel was seen stepping up his party’s reliable Hindutva rhetoric. Speaking to party cadres on January 2, Kateel exhorted the audience to prioritise the issue of “love jihad” and not worry about “road, gutter, drain and other small issues.”
With BJP at a disadvantage, Congress-JDS keen on retaking BJP’s sole southern holdout and the entry of an untested BRS, the Karnataka elec- tions will be one to watch.
Chattisgarh
Many consider Chattisgarh to be a rare state in which the Congress’s situation is not precarious. But while Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel might be confident of victory in the elections slated for December, issues ranging from the Naxal insurgency to infrastructure development will dominate the BJP’s campaign. Former Chief Minister Raman Singh received a setback when the BJP decided to contest elections without a CM face, but the three-term former-CM will nonetheless be a big asset for the main opposition party in the state. With the founding of Naya Raipur city and the growth of the steel business in the tribal-majority state to his credit, Mr Singh is the only leader in Chattisgarh who can hope to dislodge the popular and politically savvy Bhupesh Baghel, who ended the BJP’s 15-year streak in the state when he led the Congress to a 68-seat victory in the 91-member assembly.
Telangana
K Chandrasekhar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samiti, better known by its pre- vious name, Telangana Rashtra Samiti, reigns su- preme in the young state of Telangana, which goes to the polls in December. It remains to be seen if Mr Rao, popularly known as KCR, will become a via- ble player outside his state. But the BJP appears to be fast approaching in BRS’s rear view mirror, winning two by-polls and closing the voter-gap significantly in others in the run up to the 2023 state elections. Other players, notably Chandrababu ‘Cyberbabu’ Naidu’s TDP and Asad- ud-Din Owaisi’s AIMIM, will also look to increase their influence in the state where the fight to form the government is largely seen to be between the BRS and the BJP.
