BJP’s loss in the Hindi heartland is surely going to deeply hurt its top brass in Delhi. Traditionally BJP is a Hindi heartland party. In Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, BJP was in direct fight with Congress. The total number of Lok Sabha seats in the three Hindi heartland states is 65, of which the BJP had won 62 in the year 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
In all this three states BJP was in power for last 15 years and was ruled by strong regional satraps. When any political party is in power for a long time, obviously it faces anti-incumbency, and no incumbent government in recent times has won consecutive fourth term with Gujarat, Orissa and Sikkim the only exception. Congress which was in power for three terms had lost badly in Delhi (2015), Haryana (2014), Maharashtra (2014) and Assam (2016).
Likewise in Kerala, in Rajasthan too there is a trend of the Congress and the BJP getting replaced by the other in power every five years. This trend has been observed for last 20 years. Both the national parties have formed the governments every alternate term. In 2018 assembly elections, Congress has just managed to get the majority with 99 seats and a vote share of 39.3%, on the other hand, the BJP government was believed to have been facing strong anti-incumbency. However, BJP still got the respectable total of 73 seats with a vote share of 38.8%. The difference in the vote share between them is 0.5%.
In MP, too Congress has won 114 seats and is short of 2 seats to form the government. On the other hand, BJP with 109 seats has a vote share of 41% and the difference between the vote share of two archrivals amounts to 0.2%. Of course, the performance of Congress deserves appreciation but at the same time BJP should not be written off particularly in MP because it has a strong organisation in the state.
. The states of MP, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh are having a negligible percentage of minority population as compared to the other states in India. The Hindu population in these three states constitute to about 91% (census 2011) of the total population. Infact, Hindutva and Ram Mandir issue would have worked effectively for BJP in its favour. But the main reason for BJPs loss is the agrarian distress and rural discontent including widespread unemployment in these three north Indian states.
The real fight in the North India will be in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Though BJP has lost in Rajasthan and MP but it still has respectable number of seats, with a wafer-thin difference in the vote share against Congress. The voting pattern in the national polls is different from that of assembly polls.
In 2003, all these three Hindi heartland states were won by BJP and late former PM AB Vajpayee held the Lok Sabha polls almost six months prior and could not retain the power at the centre. Despite the debacle, BJP still holds the edge and is likely to emerge as the single largest party in 2019. Also, BJP is expected to make big gains in West Bengal, Orissa and even North East. But BJP has to surely redesign its strategy of development by focussing more on Bharat rather than India.
