Lok Sabha election 2019 is turning out to be unpredictable, for now

There is a strange uncertainty before the coming general election. Political pundits are hedging their bets by not declaring an outright victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). There is also no visible traction for the Opposition which has failed to come together on a single platform. This could well be a peoples’ election because political parties do not seem to be calling the shots.

The only certainty for the ruling party is that it would be difficult to repeat its performance of 2014 when it won 282 seats in the Lok Sabha. When the party’s own assessment becomes focussed on how many seats it could lose, its outlook becomes necessarily defensive. The assumption it must work with is that the party might also fall short of a clear majority. While the BJP will survive even if were not to form the next government but for the Modi-Shah duo is a do or die election. Therefore, every seat matters to them.

To counter anti-incumbency, the BJP has replaced every one of its 10 sitting MPs in Chhattisgarh which has 11 Lok Sabha seats and also plans to change a very large number of sitting MPs in other states. Apparently the Chattisgarh MPs are being punished for the BP’s rout in the state assembly elections late last year.

Denying tickets to those who were believed to underperform was a strategy Modi followed as chief minister of Gujarat. Though it is hard to understand the rationale as the reponsibility for defeat in Chattisgarh should lie with the then Chief Minister, Raman Singh. This knee-jerk decision of the party seems to underline the degree of uncertainty felt by the party as it faces a general election. 

Apparently the BJP wanted to use the same stick against its sitting MPs from Western UP where it lost badly in the Kairana Lok Sabha by-election in May 2018. However the first list of candidates shows that it has been forced to repeat most of its sitting MPs here. Apparently the party leadership was told not to depend only  on the vote-catching abilities of just two individuals -- Prime Minister Modi and Chief Minister Adityanath.  It remains to be seen whether the party would be able to replace a substantial number of MPs as planned in a state where it won 71 seats out of 80 in 2014. 

Voters show their identity cards as they stand in a queue at a polling station to cast their vote for the state assembly elections in Jodhpur. Photo: PTI

In Gujarat too the Modi-Shah duo would like to introduce new faces by dropping sitting MPs. Gujarat being their home state the Modi-Shah duo may have greater traction and could replace sitting MPs on a larger scale than in the other states.

The basic assumption behind this strategy is that anti-incumbency is directed against the local MPs and not against the party or the government. Prime Minister Modi has convinced himself and his party that the election will be swung by him alone as in 2014. If the MPs are just ciphers then he has the right to change them. But is it correct to assume that Prime Minister Modi’s name still spells magic? 

The government also counted on the ultra-nationalist rhetoric it whipped up after the Balakot bombing in Pakistan. It  is believed to have improved the BJP’s chances. Party insiders claim that earlier it was estimated that its tally could come down by about 100 seats. After the action against Pakistan, however, they expect that the party will cross the 200 mark with an estimated gain of about 30 seats in North India.

However, because the government could not show any tangible evidence of what the bombing had achieved, there is confusion in the public mind. It has gradually lost momentum as a campaign issue and has not been replaced as yet by another emotive issue. Things may yet change as we get closer to voting-day. It will help the Modi magic if some notorious financial criminals are extradited to India and some key political personalities under investigation by the state agencies are arrested.

The Opposition’s campaign too is still to build up. Congress President Rahul Gandhi has criss-crossed 12 states and interacted with people across age groups, but his campaign has not caught the nation’s imagination as yet. The coalition tipped to be the most successful, the Mahagathbandhan of the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Rashtirya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh has not yet begun to co-ordinate functioning on the ground. Some reports suggest that the simple arithmetic of adding up the caste-votes to make a clean sweep may not be working in UP.

Not every alliance at the level of leadership can assure an efficient transfer of votes to alliance partners. In 1993, there was an efficient transfer of votes between SP and BSP. But in 1996, the Congress failed to transfer its votes to the BSP although the BSP voters did transfer theirs to the Congress. In the 2017 state assembly elections, despite the Congress being in alliance with the SP, the SP votes did not get transferred to the Congress. 

This time around initial ground reports suggest that SP may find it difficult to transfer its votes to BSP candidates because of two reasons. One, SP workers believe that the party has ceded far too much ground to the rival BSP. And two, despite the assurances by their top leadership that this alliance is only for the Lok Sabha and that their assembly seats were safe, some of them think that the alliance might impact their chances in the state assembly elections adversely. Such considerations could change the outcome on seats where the BSP is contesting to the advantage of the BJP.

Finally, the voters are undecided about what matters to them most – issues of daily livelihood, expanding rural distress, lack of employment opportunities, closure of small businesses, destruction of democratic institutions and social polarisation or the rhetoric of national security. They cannot seem to make up their mind even as the Modi campaign tries to whip up the security rhetoric to push a dismal record of governance to the background.

The writer is a journalist based in Delhi. He tweets @bharatitis.