By Gyan Pathak
BJP president Amit Shah has been going through a very
tough time right from the grassroots to the national level. There is every
indication that the party is not only losing a large number of seats in the
coming Lok Sabha elections, but also seeing depletion of the umber of NDA’s
partners with political clout. NDA in Maharashtra has been cracking for a long
time and has reached so close to a break that not less than the BJP president
himself has told the party cadre to prepare for a solo battle in while a miffed
Shivsena has called BJP arrogant.
In this backdrop Amit Shah’s statement that the NDA will
cross 300 seats is just hoping against hope. Presently, NDA has only 305 seats
in the Lok Sabha, 30 less than the number it had in September 2015. If Shivsena
quits, the alliance will be reduced to 287 seats. TDP, the other major alliance
partner, has already quit in March this years. BJP’s claim that the number of
NDA partners has been increasing is right, because it has risen from 35 in
September 2015 to 45 at present. Hearing this may be very pleasant to the BJP
supporters, but the truth is bitter.
Out of these 45 NDA partners, BJP is the only national
party and has presently 268 seats in the Lok Sabha, a fall from 272 in 2014. All
other alliance partners are either state parties or unrecognized political
parties. Barring Shivsena, no other political party is in a position to win any
significant number of seats, but Shivsena is not happy with the BJP. There are 13
state parties in the alliance, including Shivsena. The other twelve are
Shiromani Akali Dal of Punjab, All India N R Congress of Puducherry, Naga
People’s Front of Nagaland, Lok Janshakti Party and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party
of Bihar, Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtrawadi
Gomantak Party of Maharashtra, All Jharkhand Students Union of Jharkhand,
National People’s Party of Meghalaya, and Pattali Makkal Katchi of Tamil Nadu.
LJP has presently 6 eats, SAD 4, PMK one, NR Congress one, JD(U) 2, Sikkim
Democratic Front one, and National Democratic Progressive Party of Nagaland has
one seat. It means only eight political parties out of 45 in the alliance have
seats in the Lok Sabha. Thus 37 political parties in the alliance have no real
worth in terms of winning seats. Barring the BJP and Shivsena, the 43 other
alliance partners have only 16 seats.
The recent assembly election results of the three states of
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh have already signaled considerable
loss to the BJP in the coming Lok Sabha poll, and Uttar Pradesh, which sent 71
BJP MPs out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2014, is undergoing a
political churning. SP and BSP are very close to having and alliance against
the BJP.
The impending loss to BJP is obvious, which is indirectly
admitted even by the BJP president when he claimed in Agartala that the North
East states and West Bengal will help NDA to cross 300 seats. When asked by
journalists how many seats he expected from the region, he said 50. On the one
hand, getting 50 seats from the region is highly ambitious, and on the others
it is an indirect statement that the NDA may not get more than 250 seats from
rest of the country. Even if the present alliance partners retain their 34
seats, BJP is reduced to 216 in his own estimate.
There are 25 seats in the North East and 42 in West
Bengal. BJP has only 9 seats from the region. If NDA is to get 50 seats, the maximum
number should come from its partners. The problem with the BJP is that it has
no alliance partner in West Bengal. Its alliance partners in the North East
could contribute some, but not to the extent of all the 25 seats that the NDA
hopes for, easing the burden on the BJP to win at least 25 seats from West
Bengal on its own. Political observers estimate that NDA could win only 11-13
seats from the North East. Even the National Register for Citizenship for Assam
is not going to help them in the state from where BJP has only 7 seats out of
14. If NDA is not going to win more than 13 seats from the North East, BJP must
win 37 seats from West Bengal to reach the tally of 50 seats from the North
East and West Bengal. This amounts to day-dreaming!
Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh
are clearly showing ominous signs to the BJP as the party will have to fight on
its own. It has a very weak alliance partner in Uttar Pradesh named Suheldev
Bharatiya Samaj Party, which is so weak that one can bet very few people even
in the state know about it. There is no other alliance partner is the rest of
the four states. There are two alliance partners in Bihar – LJP and JD(U). They
have at present only 6 and 2 seats in the Lok Sabha while the BJP has 22 seats
from the state. Seat sharing has already been finalised among the three. BJP
and the JD(U) will contest 17 seats each while LJP will contest six. The Nitish
rule in Bihar has earned a bad name recently, and the BJP shares this. NDA’s
prospect is, therefore, not very bright there also. BJP has one alliance
partner AJSU in Jharkhand, but both are in bad shape. One cannot also fail to
see the anti-incumbency in the state. Shivsena, even it remains with NDA, is
not in a position to help much. They may also lose their present seats.
Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab is already low in morale. The rest of the alliance
partners are very small in terms of seats or in terms of influence.
The alliance partners that have deserted NDA since 2014
are: Haryana Janhit Congress (BL), MDMK of Tamil Nadu (2014), DMDK of Tamil
Nadu, Revolutionary Socialist Party of Kerala (Bolshevik), Swabhimani Paksha of
Maharashtra, TDP of Andhra Pradesh, PDP of Jammu and Kashmir, KPJP of
Karnataka, Rashtriya Lok Samata Party of Bihar, and Gorkha Janmukti Morcha of
West Bengal. (IPA Service)
The post Worsening Scenarios For BJP And NDA Partners appeared first on Newspack by India Press Agency.
