Setbacks in the recent assembly polls for the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) have forced Prime Minister Narendra Modi government to have a re-look at the prospects of getting a second term in office.
Lok Sabha elections are to be held any time before May. The BJP, which has been buoyant about its chances just ahead of the recent assembly polls, is now realistically counting on allies to scrape past the half-way mark.
Ahead of the assembly polls, party president Amit Shah and Modi wouldn't have even thought about having to face a stiff challenge. And much before that, Amit Shah was even exhorting cadres to prepare for the 2024 LS polls, the insinuation being that 2019 verdict has been sealed in the party's favour.
To be fair to the saffron party, even some Opposition parties had almost given up on the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. This line of thought has been given a decent burial.
A close look at 2014 verdict and the scenario now will point towards a daunting task ahead for the BJP to repeat its electoral success.
Heart Attack
Going by any logic, the party cannot hope to get 73 of the 80 seats it bagged in Uttar Pradesh in 2014. It may even suffer a setback in the heartland state if the SP and the BSP manage to put up an umbrella alliance.
So where is the BJP going to make up for these losses. Earlier, it could have counted on Gujarat and Rajasthan. But after the assembly poll setback, it cannot count on Rajasthan, where it won all the 25 seats in 2014. That figure is likely to be less than half if polls were to be held today.
Same is the case in Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat, where it swept all 26 seats in the previous LS polls.
After a tough electoral battle in assembly polls, in which anti-BJP forces joined hands, the BJP cannot think of a repeat performance in Gujarat too.
Since the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh too have put a break on the party's ambitious poll prospects, where farm distress and slow pace of job generation forced voters to unleash the anger on the ruling party.
With just a few months ahead for LS polls, the scenario might not alter much. The BJP's argument is that the assembly polls and LS polls cannot be equated is fair enough.
But even the most optimistic saffron-laced voice can only bet that it can put up an equal fight with the Congress in states ruled by the latter. Going by rough calculations, this means at most the BJP will be able to get only half of the seats in these states.
Target South
In MP, Amit Shah has set a target of bagging all 29 seats. Considering that even in the 2014 Modi wave that did not happen, this is too ambitious a target. More so because the Congress has just clinched power in MP.
So making up for these losses from southern states and the north-east do not seem to be a realistic proposition.
The BJP has strong roots only in Karnataka, where a JD(S)-Congress combine is in power. If the alliance stays, the BJP cannot even hope to retain 17 of the 28 seats.
In Andhra though, if the BJP manages to strike a tie-up with YSRCP of Jaganmohan Reddy it may slightly improve its count of three MPs.
So the BJP is not at all in a position to scent power in the present scenario, but politics is the art of the impossible. Default scenarios sometimes just crop up out of now where. The BJP now needs such scenarios to emerge.
Divided Opposition
A united Opposition is a threat to the saffron party. So Amit Shah would unleash all resources at the party's disposal to engineer dissidence to thwart any united Opposition. And that is not a possibility which can be ruled out. Already there are differing voices emerging from the Opposition camp about Rahul Gandhi as PM, which was advocated by DMK's M K Stalin recently.
Chandrababu Naidu 's TDP, which was a Congress ally in Telangana, does not seem to favour such a proclamation. PM can be decided after polls, Naidu says.
And there are other secret aspirants for the post from regional parties, with TMC's Mamata Banejee nursing ambitions to adorn the top post.
Incidentally, the BJP is emerging as Mamata's main rival in West Bengal and this could cut down her ambitions in 42 LS seats up for grabs in the state. Thirty-four of these seats are held by Mamata's TMC.
The BJP cannot just ignore the Rahul-led Congress any more after the recent electoral setbacks.
It cannot bank on Modi's oratory as a ticket to rule the nation. The Congress now has to get its act together to win over or keep allies in good humour.
That will give regional players more bargaining power vis-a-vis the Congress during seat sharing. This is a delicate act which needs to be managed deftly. The Congress's gamble to tie-up with TDP in Telangana failed miserably in assembly polls.
Two key issues the Congress face vis-a-vis the BJP are lack of resources and a strong grass-root machinery.
And it has little time to fix this. So regional permutations and combinations are most likely to dominate the discourse after the Lok Sabha polls if there is no single party or alliance which gets through to the half-way mark.
An umbrella coalition of parties with diverse ideological perspectives is not something which majority of voters would relish. The BJP and Modi will in all possibility try to drive home the point that any anti-BJP grouping is an opportunistic one.
The Congress should shoulder the responsibility of countering this probable propaganda by putting up a united front against the saffron outreach.
If that happens, it could hope for a game-changer scenario. Electoral calculations have gone awry many a time in India mainly due to the vast landscape and diverse nature of political formations across the country.
Though this scenario stays, a clear verdict is a distant possibility leaving the door open to new and strange political permutations and combinations.
The real winner would be the grouping which manages these quirky elements with finesse. Over to the humble voter.
