The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called the Madhya Pradesh civic election results “historic”. However, coming into the election with all 16 incumbent mayors, it lost nearly half of those, including in traditional strongholds such as Gwalior, Jabalpur and Rewa.
However, since these elections were being dubbed as semi-finals for the Assembly elections scheduled 14 months from now, the score line – and the fact that margins were close in at least two cities -- has given the Congress also some hope.
Despite the official BJP line of “historic victory”, there have been murmurs of introspection on why so many mayoral seats were lost. BJP leaders point to how the party lost both the mayoral posts in the Gwalior-Chambal belt (Gwalior and Morena) that allowed Congress to take a dig at its former member Jyotiraditya Scindia, who switched loyalties two years ago.
In Katni -- part of the Khajuraho Lok Sabha seat that BJP State President V D Sharma represents -- the party’s candidate lost to its own rebel Priti Sanjeev Suri, who contested as an independent.
It lost two out of three seats (Singrauli to AAP and Rewa to the Congress) in the Vindhya region, where it did well in the last Assembly elections.
Loss of Gwalior
Some, like the BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, have been more vocal about the loss. “I cannot deny that the loss of Gwalior is alarming for us... there is definitely a need to review the loss,” he told a local TV channel in an interview on Thursday.
In response to a question on BJP’s past show in Gwalior, where Congress triumphed after 57 years, Mr. Vijayvargiya added that the entry of a group [a reference to Mr. Scindia and his supporters joining the BJP] was supposed to strengthen the party. “If we have lost there, we will have to think about the reasons,” he said.
There were reported differences between Mr. Scindia and Union Minister and Morena MP Narendra Singh Tomar and that caused a delay in candidate announcement. If unresolved, these differences can pose bigger selection headache in next year’s Assembly polls.
Earlier on Wednesday, after the final results were announced, there was an attempt to contextualise the mayoral post losses, especially the ones to the Congress, by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and State President V. D. Sharma.
“In Katni, which falls under my constituency, both the candidates [the winner Priti Suri Suri and BJP’s Jyoti Dikshit whom she defeated] were BJP workers and even there, 27 of the 45 corporators, whom the people have elected are from the BJP. Similarly, a majority of the newly elected corporators in Gwalior, Singrauli and Jabalpur [seats where BJP lost the mayoral elections] are from our party,” said Mr. Sharma, while also referring to the victory of Ms. Suri, whom the party had expelled and who won despite whirlwind rallies by Mr. Chouhan and Mr. Scindia.
BJP strategies and upper caste voters
Mr. Chouhan called the Congress wins in the five seats “adhoori jeet (incomplete win)”. “Congress won in five seats but that win is incomplete. The mayors may be theirs but the majority of corporators are with us. Wherever we won [the mayoral polls], we won spectacularly,” said the Chief Minister.
While they point to the fact that an overwhelming majority of the newly elected members of these urban bodies –including municipal corporations and councils – are from the BJP, showing that grassroots support is intact, many BJP leaders privately, and some like Mr. Vijayvargiya openly credit the Congress for its mayoral candidate selections in the elections. Strategies like booth-vistarak, under which the BJP had planned a massive expansion programme and even launched an App, as well as the Tridev Formula -- in which the block functionaries were to play a major role -- did not give expected results, party sources concede.
On why the BJP failed to choose the right candidates and could not sense the winning potential of rebels who won later, the BJP leader said that the party’s constant quest for widening its social outreach by diversifying representation may have resulted in such selections and also upset the upper caste voters, who play a key role in belts such as Vindhyas and Gwalior-Chambal.
Some within the ranks are also questioning the strategy to reverse a decision by the previous Congress government to hold indirect elections for mayors.
While the Congress alleges that the State machinery worked for the BJP and says that the mayoral numbers could have been better for them otherwise, they have some soul-searching to do as well. Three sitting MLAs lost elections and some of the mayoral wins did not seem to have a carryover effect in the wards. The BJP claims that the mayoral wins was a sign of the mayoral candidates’ individual image rather than massive public support in favour of the party. The emergence of Aam Aadmi Party and AIMIM has further complicated matters for the Congress, a possibility their spokespersons do not deny.
Some in the BJP, meanwhile, are dismissing any co-relation of these elections with next year’s Assembly polls.
“If [Congress State President] Mr. Kamal Nath thinks that these mayoral elections would translate into assembly wins, we would like him to keep thinking that. Assembly polls are issue-based and there are fewer candidates for the rebels to play spoilsport,” says the BJP leader.
