Decoding the surprising mandate

JAY JOSHI   

The much-anticipated Lok Sabha polling results finally came yesterday. Surprisingly, the NDA crossed 300 seats. Secondly, The Bharatiya Janata Party, which had secured 282 seats in 2014, gained an even bigger majority this time.   

During the elections, both ruling and opposition parties made an effort to build captivating campaigns around various issues that they considered would matter the most, and the political climate was considerably volatile to make any predictions, at least till the polls were on. While political parties introduced a number of themes and issues in this poll season, what were the ones that impacted the results?   

TG Life asked this question to a number of veteran politicians and political analysts across various ideologies to unearth some interesting answers.   

“First and foremost issue was development. The BJP focused on delivering development,” said Rajendra Arlekar, former Speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly. “Secondly, the BJP’s politics had a positive overtone. As can be seen from their slogan ‘Sabka saath, sabka vikas’. Last but not the least, the ruling party awakened the spirit of nationalism. 

On the other hand, the opposition focused more on criticizing Modi and fostered negativity. Also, promises such as review of AFSPA, was a very wrong stand to take on account of the opposition,” stated the former speaker.   

Former union Minister of Law and former Chief Minister of Goa, Ramakant Khalap however, held a different view. This situation requires analysis. This is indeed unexpected. THe whole of cow belt going in favour of the BJP is quite surprising, and there needs to be a deeper study of why this has happened,” stated Khalap.   

On the other hand, advocate Cleofato Almeida Coutinho, cited a number of social factors that could have led to current electoral mandate. “ The people seemed to have accepted that there was no alternative to current leadership”, said Coutinho. “Also, Prime Minister Modi succeeded in turning a Parliamentary campaign into Presidential one. There was no candidate available on the opposing side. It was felt that even if he wins, Rahul Gandhi cannot become Prime Minister; there was fear that Mayawati may become Prime Minister or Mamata Banerjee becoming the PM. KCR too was in the race for the post. In such a situation, people must have banked on the known face and recognised brand of Narendra Modi. The fear of chaos seems to have worked here,” said the advocate.   

Siddharth Karapurkar, the environmental head of Aam Aadmi Party held that issues of real importance were not brought to the discussion table. 

“On the national level, issues such as demonetisation never received the attentions they deserved. Instead the spotlight was directed to other issues and the NDA won without doing much concrete work on the ground” said Karapurkar, adding that he also had reservations about the electronic voting machines.   

MGP leader and physician Ketan Bhatikar on the other hand, credited organisational strength of the ruling party for the victory. “The poll result shows that the organisational strength of BJP is good, and there was no opposition leader as such who could pose a challenge to it,” stated Bhatikar.

Former speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly, Surendra Sirsat however, observes some other subtle factors playing a role in this election. “Firstly, the opposition parties failed to stitch together a strong alliance, and this in turn split their votes. The BJP on the other hand wisely played the Hindutva card, and gained many ‘soft Hindu’ votes- that is voters who are not exactly staunch Hindutva backers, but are nevertheless slightly inclined towards the doctrine. Such votes played a decisive role.” said the former Speaker

Further analysis also suggests that this elections did indeed highlight the national aspirations over regional identities and caste politics. That said, it now remains to be seen whether the new government delivers on the promises it made to the voters.