BJP’s BIHAR DEBACLE

Modi and Shah are being hanged for losing Bihar. But no one is saying what they could have done to avert the debacle?

In my Post/Blog of 09 Nov I said, “No one foresaw that the Maha-Gath-Bandhan (MGB) partners’ individual vote-shares will coalesce into one big number. Nitish and Lalu managed to retain the loyalty of their supporters to the extent that even MSY and Asaduddin Owaisi failed to steal from Nitish-Lalu vote banks. In that scenario, what the BJP did, or did not do, was immaterial. One could argue that this or that would have made a difference. Perhaps yes. But only a marginal difference; the net result would have remained the same: a landslide for MGB.”

I stand by that statement.

UP election is in 2017. Now imagine that SP, BSP and Congress form an MGB. Let us assume that such an MGB is able to transfer their vote shares so that their votes coalesce into a big number, as they did for the Bihar MGB. The UP MGB will then have 66.85% of votes and win 332/403 seats, going by their 2012 results.  What can BJP do to steal the election from such an MGB?

Can it prevent formation of such an MGB?  By itself forming a coalition with either SP or BSP? But will either of them agree to such a coalition?

BJP can only hope that the bitter rivals SP and BSP will not come together – but they once did to form the govt in UP, 1993 to mid-1995. Nitish and Lalu, bitter enemies once, came together in Bihar, notwithstanding Nitin grabbing power from Lalu by denouncing Lalu’s ‘Jungle Raj,’ and Lalu saying of Nitin, “aisa koi saga nahin, jis ko usne thaga nahin.”

BJP should not make the mistake of assuming, hoping - just as it wrongly did in Bihar – that the UP MGB partners’ votes will not coalesce.

Can the people hanging Modi and Shah suggest a winning strategy in UP in the face of a Bihar like MGB? What can BJP do in the next one year to improve its chances of success against the possible UP MGB?

UP election is still more than 15 months away. And as Harold Wilson, former British PM said, “A week is a long time in politics.”