It is widely acknowledged across the state that there’s a huge anti-incumbency against the current Bharat Rashtra Samiti government headed by Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), and the voters are looking for a party that can provide an alternative by defeating the BRS.
After the Congress’ convincing win in the Karnataka Assembly elections, the party unit’s leadership in Telangana wasted no time in claiming that the result was a harbinger of change across India. They proclaimed the Karnataka verdict to be a barometer of the changing public mood across India and a resounding rejection by the public of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideology and Prime Minister Modi’s waning popularity among the electorate. The Congress party’s leaders and spokespersons, especially from its Telangana unit, in television debates and on public platforms, declared that the victory of the Congress party in the Telangana Assembly elections, which are due in six months, and the General Election early next year, are thus a foregone conclusion.
While the exuberance and cheer among the Telangana Congress leaders on their party’s victory in the Karnataka elections are understandable, their extrapolations do not stand the test of either logic or history.
Today, the electorate across India has been unambiguous in differentiating between national and state elections and elections in two states for their Assemblies. The results of the 2018 Assembly electionsin Karnataka and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections clearly show that the electorate treats the state and national polls disjointedly. In the 2018 Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 104 seats and stood as the single largest party (SLP). On the other hand, the Congress party won 80 seats and formed the government along with the Janata Dal (Secular), which won 37 seats. The results were starkly different in the Lok Sabha elections while the Congress-JD(S) government was in power in the state. The BJP won 25 seats, while the Congress, the JD(S) and an independent won one seat each. One can see a similar pattern repeating across many states all over India in the last election cycle. Prominent examples include Rajasthan, Delhi, and Madhya Pradesh.
Later in 2018, just a few months before the General Election, the Congress secured clear majorities in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh Assembly elections. Though it fell just two seats short of an absolute majority in Madhya Pradesh, it formed governments in all three states. In the Lok Sabha elections held only a few months after, the Congress won a paltry three out of 65 seats up for grabs in the same three states. On the other hand, the BJP won a landslide 61 seats from these three states, nine more than the 52 seats Congress won from all the 29 states and seven Union Territories in India.
Coming to the Congress party’s argument that their party’s victory in Karnataka portends a similar win for it in the Telangana elections due in five months, once again, a look at the last election cycle will be instructive.
Months after the Congress performed decently well in Karnataka and formed a government along with JD(S), the Congress could only win 19 seats in the 2018 elections in Telangana, compared to the 21 seats it won in the 2014 elections. Moreover, in Andhra Pradesh, the other Telugu state neighbouring Karnataka, Congress lost every seat it contested. But, of course, even the BJP’s performance in these two states did not correlate with its performance in Karnataka.
Suppose a victory in one state were to influence the results in another. In that case, BJP must have won the Karnataka election, which followed only a few months after the BJP’s spectacular seventh straight victory in Gujarat.
Also, the recently held Gujarat and Himachal elections and the 2018 Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana elections demonstrate that even in states that go to elections the same day return different verdicts. While BJP won in Gujarat, it lost to the Congress party in Himachal Pradesh. Similarly, the Congress saw a decline in Telangana, while it gained sharply in the other three states.
By now, it is clear that every state’s voters vote with their minds when it comes to state elections, and Telangana’s voters are no exception.
It is widely acknowledged across the state that there’s a huge anti-incumbency against the current Bharat Rashtra Samiti government headed by Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), and the voters are looking for a party that can provide an alternative by defeating the BRS.
While the Congress party could convince the voters in the last two elections that it is the main opposition to BRS, voters in the state no longer believe the Congress to be fighting the BRS. Most MLAs who won on the Congress ticket in the 2014 and 2018 elections joined the BRS within months of winning.
On the one hand, the BJP victories in the GHMC and MLC elections, and in the by-polls to the Assembly after 2018, clearly show that the electorate believes that a vote for the Congress eventually leads to another seat for BRS. Indeed, the Congress may have better chances of improving its tally in the state, but only if it stops trying to deceive the voters that it is fighting the BRS and joins it in an open alliance.
(The author is BJP
TS spokesperson)
