Karnataka elections: Why BJP will lose?

This Karnataka poll is significant for both BJP and Congress party, ahead of general elections next year. The state is the last major bastion of the opposition Congress party, which India's ruling BJP wants to break into.

• Loss in this election would spell disaster for the Congress party, which rules only Karnataka, Punjab, Mizoram and Puducherry. 
• The BJP and its allies are in power in 22 of India's 29 states.
• This election is also a crucial for the BJP, which has won in Karnataka only once before. The party has a limited or zero presence in the four other southern states, where it is unlikely to contest an election without a regional ally.
• BJP is saddled with corruption tainted CM candidate BS Yedurappa and mining don Gali Janardhana Reddy. Without BSY & GJR, in 2013, BJP's popular vote share has plummeted from 33% to 20% compared Congress party's 37%.
• BJP is also saddled with bad performance of PM Modi at centre in the last 4 years. He has not a single worthwhile achievement to campaign in this election. Modi focused only on wrong doings of Congress during past 70 years, which are unverifiable and distorted as well and no one is buying his arguments. In fact he has become a laughing stock.
• With BSY and GJR back into BJP fold, BJP needs vote swing of +4% to get a simple majority (112/222) in the Assembly to oust Congress. And Congress needs a vote swing of +3% to retain the simple majority (114/222) in the Assembly. 
• As things stands, BJP's task seems to be uphill where as Congress has to sweat a lot. This is reflected by the fact that Rahul Gandhi has spent full one month in Karnataka campaign and PM Modi has to spend full two weeks.

Modi not forming Cauvery water board, despite Supreme Court judgment, has angered 6% Tamil voters in Karnataka. Similarly not extending legitimate financial support and special category status to AP as per AP Reorganization Act 2014 has alienated 6% Telugu voters in Karnataka. With Muslims at 14%, Christians at 4%, Dalits at 18% - altogether anti-BJP / anti-Modi voters are huge 48% stand disgusted with BJP/Modi. With no Modi/BJP wave, Modi's negative performance etc how BJP will win Karnataka election, is a million dollar question.

While Rahul Gandhi's election speeches are some what dignified, Modi's speeches are third class and speaks very poorly of his stature as PM. The fact that Modi is scared of losing Karnataka election to Congress & Rahul Gandhii, with tremendous negative vibrations in Hindi heartland states UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan etc is reflected by his bankruptcy of ideas and vulgarity of speeches indicating his desperateness and fear of losing 2019 general elections. In any case, I don't see any way BJP can get even 70+ seats in Karnataka and that leaves simple majority to Congress and the JDS (self proclaimed king maker) with 30+ seats, remaining irrelevant. This victory of Congress party in Karnataka is not attributable to Siddaramaiah who was facing some kind of anti-incumbency but to the much bigger anti-incumbency of Modi in entire India. He has no respect for any other person, institution or democracy or any thing. Other than winning elections with rhetoric, money power and bull power, Modi hasn't done anything good to India. In an in depth analysis, one will discover tremendous damages to society. With Modi's reckless adventures leading to suffering of millions of farmers, poor people, unemployed youth, small businessmen etc during the past 4 years and with no regret by him so far, Modi is unfit to rule and must be consigned to trash bin. This will start with Karnataka elections and will end with General elections 2019. 

Modi and BJP fading away in Hindi heartland

In 2014-15 BJP president Amit Shah's proclamed an uninterrupted BJP rule at the Centre for the next 50 years. Even those who factored in unforeseen political challenges had little doubt that the BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah would have an easy ride at least for 15 years. But such conviction is a thing of the past. These observations were made by a senior BJP leader from UP within days after the BJP suffered shock defeats in the byelections in Gorakhpur and Phulpur. UP CM Yogi Adityanath, the BJP's latest mascot candidly admitted that they had been done in by overconfidence. 

• As in March 2018, BJP is in power 15 states and shares power in 5 other states. While 3 states are in Congress fold, 6 states are ruled by regional parties.
• Despite its massive presence in the country, today BJP is trembling with negative vibrations across the nation and elections for 5 states are slated for 2018 and general election for 2019 and Modi is desperately searching for a magic wand, that will work.
• In a span of 10 days, BJP suffered stinging defeats in UP’s Gorakhpur and Phulpur, constituencies held earlier by CM Adityanath and DyCM KP Maurya. While Tripura was wrested by BJP ending the 25-year-old Left Front regime, BJP surrendered their 27-year-long  domination of Gorakhpur to a loose alliance of the SP and BSP. In Bihar, revived alliance with the JDU did not bring any benefit as RJD retained the Araria LS constituency and the Jehanabad Assembly seat. Indeed, you never can take the Indian electorate for granted.
• In the RS polls, BJP’s strength in UP Assembly assured its victory in 8 seats, but it managed to win another seat by engineering cross-voting from the opposition to ensure the BSP candidate’s defeat. Managing a victory in a RS election through backroom manoeuvres is in no way a measure of public opinion.
• The reports from the Hindi heartland States of UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, MP and many more affirm that the popular mood is definitely turning against the BJP. The party is witnessing a steady erosion of support on account of agrarian crisis, the economic hardships on account of demonetisation and GST reforms, and the general failure to live up to the high expectations generated through the rhetoric of leaders like Modi. There is little doubt that this is bound to reflect in reduction of seats for the BJP in the 2019 general election.
• The fact of the matter is voters in the Hindi heartland States are fed up with BJP and they need to face it squarely without taking recourse to convoluted logic and lame excuses. The vote share of the BJP fell by 1,04,495 in Gorakhpur from the 2014 count and by a massive 2,20,102  in Phulpur.
• It is more daunting for the BJP since a mere arithmetical aggregation of SP and BSP votes of the 2017 Assembly elections shows the two parties ahead in as many as 50 of the 80 LS seats in the State. If this arithmetic is getting supplemented by an emotive appeal, a potential SP-BSP alliance will make rapid strides in UP’s electoral politics. Projections on the basis of a cumulative vote share assessment of the 2017 UP Assembly election results are that the SP-BSP combine has a lead of 1.45 lakh votes across 57 LS seats. The BJP and its allies lead in 23 seats by 58,000 votes, a sharp fall from the 71 seats won by BJP and 2 seats won by its allies in 2014.
• Akhilesh Yadav, SP president and former UP CM is of the view that the voter dissatisfaction with the BJP regimes at the Centre and in the States is fast acquiring big proportions and is bound to spread nationally in due course. He opines that Gorakhpur and Phulpur were merely precursors. 
• Akhilesh Yadav said that efforts to portray the BJP defeats in Gorakhpur and Phulpur as the mere fallout of electoral arithmetic is a mechanistic assessment that fails to take into consideration the larger social, economic and political context marked by misrule, the human misery caused by that misrule.
• The TDP  decision to leave the NDA and move a no-confidence motion against the Modi government is another indication of BJP mishandling its NDA allies.
• The manner in which the BJP’s sought to counter the no-confidence motion underscore a sense of panic. The party seems to have unleashed the AIADMK, which has become completely servile to Modi and Shah after  Jayalalithaa’s death, and the TRS to continuously disrupt Parliament on some pretext or the other so that the no-confidence motion cannot be taken up. It seems that like the UPA-II, the Modi Ministry is desperately seeking to run away from parliamentary inspection. The debates on the no-confidence motion would have been telecast live and this too could have added to the government’s discomfiture. But such desperate filibustering will ultimately aggravate voter disenchantment with the Modi government.
• The opposition parties have reinforced attempts to rally anti-BJP forces. While the Congress laid out its plan of action for non-BJP coalition in a special plenary and others are seeking to stitch an alliance of regional parties and these are based on the premise that the BJP is no longer in the position of strength that it enjoyed in 2014. 
• In the RS election in UP, the SP. and the Congress had announced support to the BSP candidate but lost due to cross voting in favour of 9th BJP candidate. The BJP leadership saw in the situation a chance to make mischief between the allies to split them. However, in the press conference that Mayawati said that BSP saw through the BJP’s dirty tricks and vile political games and horse-trading and made it clear that the alliance would continue. 
• BJP and RSS knew that Yogi Adityanath’s stock had taken a big beating. Projected last year as a potential successor to Modi, he has been exposed as an inefficient and ordinary “non vote catcher” leader who cannot even retain his own pocket borough that he had literally lorded over for decades. That does strengthen the Modi-Shah duo as the only vote catcher in the BJP, but the Hindi heartland States account for approximately 200 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha.
• The BJP is known traditionally to be an urban-centric party. The low turnout in the urban areas in the Gorakhpur at 33% and Phulpur 31% was disconcerting in the context of electoral challenges. This showed that the rural antipathy towards the party continued, its urban core base was resolutely refusing to rally behind it. It remains to be seen how Modi and Shah will tackle this. Certainly empty rhetoric cannot contain these jolts and there is widespread agreement with this observation among the Sangh Parivar rank and file.

Read the source article

Having not ruled the country during first two years and misruled the country with disruptive reforms without preparation and leaving all vulnerable people to their fate without any support, time is now for Modi and BJP to pay the price. No matter what he does, his graph will continue to plunge, an RSS survey has warned Modi. The only way to limit damages is to go for flash polls. That is almost certainty if Karnataka result stuns BJP, which is likely as per opinion polls. Arrogance and dictatorial attitudes will never pay. Consequences are inescapable. Modi's wrong behavior and non-performance and corruption & scams etc has no bounds, much worse than Congress and UPA. Modi must realize that empty rhetoric will not work all the times.