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After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh elections in December last year, it was seen as a BJP victory across the nation, as it had conquered 19 states. It seemed that nothing could shake the BJP and Modi wave.
Rahul Gandhi’s refurbished image as a leader was still not enough to overshadow the Modi wave, even though Congress had put forward one of its best performances in the BJP-dominated state.
However, many saw the results in Gujarat as an indicator of the BJP’s fading dominance.
2018 had something else in store for the all-powerful party. From broken alliances to winning just one Assembly election throughout the year, the party has a lot of re-thinking to do before 2019.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu broke alliance with the BJP in March, saying that he had taken the decision in the interests of his state.
In Jammu and Kashmir in June, the BJP broke its alliance with the People's Democratic Party (PDP). And the break-ups kept coming – a day before the counting in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram, RLSP chief Upendra Kushwaha broke away from the NDA, even quitting as a Union minister.
Apart from the break-ups, the elections in several states also showed BJP on a downward trend. Out of the nine Assembly elections in the country, the BJP managed to win only in Tripura.
In Karnataka, although the BJP was the largest party, the JD(S) formed the government in coalition with the Congress. In Assembly elections in Meghalaya and Nagaland too, the BJP lost popularity.
The results in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan seem to prove that the BJP’s disappointing performance in Gujarat was an indicator of a larger disaffection with the saffron party.
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