In a meeting which was presided over by Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology of India Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Wednesday, Goa’s Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said that BJP would welcome the support from regional parties. The meeting was held to draft a path for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and was attended not only by the ruling party MLAs and ministers, but also by MGP and independent MLAs. This was BJP’s attempt of portraying supposed unity with their political allies despite multiple open arguments between the members of the parties.
The reason is simple, BJP will require support of the regional parties not only in Goa but throughout the country during Lok Sabha elections. In the last 10 years, the vote share of regional parties have increased. Presently, BJP is in power in 12 States and despite having a majority in most of those States, they have retained their alliances. In some States, they have come to power by forming alliances but have failed to hang onto those partnerships with the newest example being Tamil Nadu.
After the formation of the INDIA front, AIADMK split with the saffron party in the southern state. After suffering a major loss in Karnataka, this was another jolt for BJP’s South India mission. It is obvious that if BJP wants to cross the 300 seats mark in Lok Sabha, they will have to rely on regional parties from the respective states. On the one hand, pre-election polls conducted by some agencies suggest that BJP will achieve a majority mark with the party winning around 288 seats.
PM Modi too, has already announced his third term in office by claiming India’s entry in the list of world’s top three economies. However, on the other hand, Jammu and Kashmir’s former Governor Satyapal Malik, who was also Goa’s former governor, has said in an interview with Rahul Gandhi that the BJP government will not return to power in 2024. Although it is agreeable that Malik is not a psephologist, one cannot deny the increased importance of regional parties given the changed political situation after 2019. The regional parties also owe their rise in demand to the anti-BJP stance taken by various opposition parties. The question is, who will listen to the individualised voice of the regional parties?
Although there are MPs of DMK, TMC, YSR, JDU, BJD, NCP and TDP in the Lok Sabha after Congress, none of those parties have more than 50 members in the parliament. That is the reason why these parties have come together to form INDIA alliance.
The national parties who are part of the INDIA front have also appealed to the regional parties from the States ruled by them. The strength of the regional parties will become more apparent after the results of upcoming elections scheduled to take place in five states. According to Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, 2024 general elections will not be a one-horse race for BJP. Sen has argued that DMK, Trinamool and Samajwadi Party will play crucial role in the upcoming general elections. Although West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Bannerjee is seen as an alternative to Modi, her contention does not seem lopsided in the anti-BJP sentiment. On the other hand, in spite of the fact that response towards Congress have seen a rise after monumental win in Karnataka and Bharat Jodo Yatra, the party still needs to work on their weak points. Moreover, the internal conflicts within Congress are yet to be resolved. But even then, Congress will still be considered as the major alternative for the BJP. The saffron party is well aware that if a strong option emerges, then the regional parties will back the new alternative since BJP has only stressed on making the image of India as Hindu nation. In the last nine years, the BJP has toppled the governments ruled by Opposition in many States. In fact, they even encouraged defections in States despite coming to power. In the recent past, after gaining power by causing a split within Shiv Sena which led to defection of 40 Sena MLAs including Eknath Shinde, they also went after NCP with the help from Ajit Pawar. Citizens too, are agitated over BJP’s absolute greed for power as suggested by multiple media surveys and INDIA alliance hopes to capitalise on it.
Some political scientists have opined that BJP’s mark will be less than 250 at Lok Sabha if they suffer unexpected results during the Assembly elections of five states. As per latest publications dated May 2023 from Election Commission of India, and subsequent notifications, there are six national parties, 54 State parties, and 2,597 unrecognised parties. This is why BJP is calling upon regional parties to walk alongside them.
