SHRIPAD SABNIS
A general election in India is like a 9-round tennis match. The group that wins five of these rounds wins the Grand Slam of the election. There are nine phases; Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh (undivided), Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Kerala. There are a total of 351 Lok Sabha constituencies in these 9 states. The alliance that wins in five of these states reaches two hundred seats. Together these seats become 272.
For this year’s general elections, we have to present this equation a new. We have to look at the six states of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, Karnataka, Jharkhand and Odisha. These states with 193 seats are in tough contests. The results of these states will determine how many seats the BJP will get in the month of June. All seats won beyond 225 must come from this state.
Elections in India are fought state wise. PM Modi won in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Assam, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The fight for only 25 places was tough for them. BJP also achieved good results in West Bengal and Odisha. An outright victory in 12 states and an increased vote margin in other places made it easy for him to win.
This will explain how BJP got more than 50 percent votes in 224 seats. Getting more than 50 percent of the votes in the ‘first pass the post’ system is sky high. This can be understood if we consider that Rajiv Gandhi got only 48.12 percent votes with 414 seats.
This leads to two conclusions. One is that these 224 seats fall in the same 12 states where the BJP won outright. The challenge of 2024 is even tougher. There is an anti-government atmosphere even against the BJP-ruled state government; But we cannot forget that BJP got 58.21 percent votes in this state in 2019. So even though there is opposition to BJP, not everything is easy here for the opposition.
Another thing is that from the same statistics we understand that even though BJP won 224 seats in one go, it got only 79 out of 319 seats in the rest of the country. That means the strike rate is less than a quarter. BJP has to win half of the remaining 319 seats. The real battle lies here and Narendra Modi needs to surpass his earlier target of 303 to maintain his dominance.
Modi is facing different situations in these states. Their strong allies in Maharashtra and Bihar have become much weaker. The Shiv Sena is weakened by splits and the Sanyukt Janata Dal is weakened by an ideological and impotent leader. So PM Modi will face the challenge of getting votes in his own name.
State governments in Jharkhand and Karnataka are against Modi. Odisha no longer has a friendly match like 2019. If we become weak and unstable, we will suffer political exile in our later years, Naveen Patnaik would be concerned. Therefore, although this election looks easy on a broad scale, it is more fiercely contested than 2019.
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