The missing votes

BS OPINION

The BJP and the Congress must both be looking for lessons from last week's elections.

Of the several that they will draw, one must worry both equally. This is that the decline in the vote share of the Congress in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh did not accrue entirely or even substantially to the BJP. In other words, the people voted against the Congress but not necessarily for the BJP.

Thus, in MP where the BJP won the most handsome victory, the BJP's vote share increased only marginally, from 39.26 per cent in 1998 to 40.64 per cent in 2003.

However, the Congress share declined sharply from 40.59 to 30.12 per cent. In Rajasthan, the BJP's share increased from 33.23 per cent to 38.4 per cent while that of the Congress declined more steeply from 44.95 per cent to 34.9 per cent.

And in Chhattisgarh, in 1998 the BJP got 40.12 per cent of the vote but this time its share actually declined to 38.83 per cent. The Congress share too came down but more substantially, from 40.65 per cent to 35.8 per cent. In Delhi, the changes were insignificant.

Where did the missing votes go in the three states? To the smaller parties like the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Indian National Lok Dal, the Nationalist Congress Party and so on. Each one of them improved, albeit mostly by a smallish percentage, over the 1998 election.

The exception was the NCP, which wasn't around then. This time its share was 7.38 per cent in Chhattisgarh. So while these elections seemed like a two-horse race, the reality has been different.

Of the two main parties, the BJP needs to worry less because, even if it has not gained much at the expense of the Congress, its share has either held or hasn't declined anywhere near as dramatically as that of the Congress.

It will, nevertheless, have to factor the stagnation in its support level when it makes its calculations for the 2004 general elections. As for the Congress, even if it allows for the effect of anti-incumbency, especially in MP where the party had been in power for 10 years, it will have to start asking some very hard questions of itself.

A good starting point would be Chhattisgarh where the NCP (read V C Shukla) knew it would not win many seats, but was determined to defeat the Congress.

That Mr Jogi was mainly responsible for the debacle is stating the obvious. However, the not-so-obvious also needs to be borne in mind and this concerns the source from which he drew his legitimacy.

The story in Rajasthan differs only in the broad contours. The details are very similar in respect of the sources of legitimacy of those who contested and those who managed the election.

To put it differently, the problem facing the Congress is not just of anti-incumbency or the failure to put together effective coalitions. Those are important, no doubt, but there is also the larger problem of national level leadership, which includes people who cannot win even a panchayat election, as pictures of the Congress Working Committee meeting on Sunday make clear.

If Sonia Gandhi cannot or will not gather around herself a strong group of vote-getters, it becomes one more negative vote on her style of leadership.