The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be disappointed with the exit polls of the recently concluded assembly elections held in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir.
Showing remarkable unanimity, the exit polls have indicated the clear ouster of the 10-year-old BJP government in Haryana by the Congress party and has given a definite edge to the INDIA bloc in Jammu and Kashmir, which is witnessing a tight multi-party contest.
Considering the fact that this is the first harbinger of the ruling party’s political standing after its failure to get a majority on its own in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls earlier this year, it will add to the growing sense of disquiet within the BJP which not so long ago claimed it was invincible.
While exit polls have often gone wrong, they usually have done so in recent years in favour of the BJP. It is also most unlikely that virtually the whole range of pollsters, including those catering to television channels usually cheerleading the ruling party, would predict the same dismal outcome.
Although the BJP is publicly still keeping a brave face, it is no doubt bracing itself for yet another political setback when the final results are announced a few days later.
In Haryana, the BJP has been clearly on the back foot for many months and the exit polls will not come as a surprise.
Indeed, even in 2019 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi romped home to a second term with a barnstorming victory in the Lok Sabha polls, sweeping all 10 parliamentary seats in Haryana, his party surprised many by failing to get a majority on its own.
It had to resort to an unholy alliance with the Jat-dominated Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), which had actively campaigned against the BJP government to get a second term through the back door.
The ruling party’s stock has slumped lower over the past several years.
The farmers' agitation, the women wrestlers' fierce protests against a BJP leader charging him with sexual harassment during his tenure as chief of the Indian Wrestling Federation, mounting unemployment and deteriorating law and order problems have all fuelled anti-incumbency.
Even a change in chief minister not long before the assembly polls has failed to improve public perceptions about the government and the open infighting within the ruling party over ticket distribution for the polls has compounded its woes.
Significantly, the lack of self-confidence about its electoral prospects in Haryana was evident from the way both Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are being shielded from the direct impact of an impending poll debacle in the state. Both leaders, who typically carry out barnstorming tours for elections, did token campaigns for the state's polls minus usual roadshows.
As for the Congress party and its leader Rahul Gandhi, a handsome victory in Haryana and the capture of one more state in the country will no doubt be a boost.
Coming as it does after the improved performance of the Congress and the efficacy of the INDIA bloc in the Lok Sabha polls, it will both help restore morale within the party and also raise the stock of Rahul Gandhi as an effective Leader of the Opposition in Parliament.
Exit poll predictions of the BJP failing to gain the upper hand in Jammu and Kashmir by thwarting the prospects of the National Conference-Congress alliance in the Valley by encouraging a whole host of smaller parties and individuals to participate, some of them former separatists, are also significant.
Judging from the exit polls, the BJP has been unable to either sweep the polls in Jammu, which has 43 seats, or badly damage the National Conference in the Kashmir Valley with 47 seats through proxies or disrupting parties and candidates.
With the People's Democratic Party (PDP) already declaring its support for a National Conference-Congress government, it is going to be difficult for the BJP to come to power by hook or by crook.
BJP cheerleaders have already started a chorus in favour of the state governor choosing first the single largest party, ignoring the claims of a pre-poll alliance, even if the latter is much larger.
Rules and conventions are often tossed out of the window in the sensitive border state in the name of national security.
But the BJP may find it extremely difficult to find parties in the Valley to openly support it and any exercise in breaking parties to buying over legislators could lead to further instability and defeat the entire purpose of getting political legitimacy through a free and fair poll.
Finally, if the exit poll predictions hold good, all eyes will turn to the next round of assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand where the stakes of the BJP are even higher.
If the BJP-led alliance is defeated particularly in Maharashtra, the second largest state in India, and there are already indications this may well come to pass, there will no doubt be a national fallout.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist and the author of ‘Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati’. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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