Narendra Modi’s promise during the general election was to deliver a “Congress mukt Bharat”, meaning he would rest only when that party was finished. Congress is out of power in the Centre, and Mr Modi’s crushing victory has left them a barely relevant force in the Lok Sabha, with fewer than 10 per cent of the seats.
However, Congress still rules in 11 states. These are Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Uttarakhand. In the last year, Congress has lost Delhi, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. Two of the states the Congress holds, Haryana and Maharashtra, are going to the polls in a few days.
Opinion polls have not thrown up a clear picture of who is going to win, but there seems to be a consensus that the Congress is going to lose. The India TV-C Voter tracking poll projects the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the single largest party in the 288-seat Assembly with 93 seats, followed by the Shiv Sena with 59 seats. Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party is projected to win 47 seats, followed by the Congress with 40 seats.
Another poll, this one by ABP News and Nielsen, said that the BJP would win 112 seats, the Shiv Sena 62, the NCP 38 and the Congress 45. Another channel’s analysis was that “BJP is expected to get 90 seats, followed closely by the Congress, with 72, and the Shiv Sena with 61. The NCP is projected to win 38 seats. It could mean that when an alliance breaks, the voters back the stronger party in the al-liance, which has a national clout. Though Shiv Sena claims it is still stronger than the BJP in the state, the Modi charisma will take the party through as Uddhav Thackeray cannot match the Modi-pull as of now.”
In Haryana’s 90-member Assembly, one poll claimed that the BJP would emerge as the single largest party with 33 seats. The Congress, ruling the state for the last 10 years, would come third with 16 seats. The loss of these two states will be a severe blow to the Congress.
My prediction is that the break-up of the alliance will be devastating for the Shiv Sena, which will slowly become irrelevant. The Thackerays and the BJP had a strange arrangement for a couple of decades which did not make sense to observers. The BJP would contest more Lok Sabha seats from Maharashtra, and the Sena would get more Assembly seats. However, the BJP would win about 4.5 out of every 10 seats it contested while the Sena could only win on three. This clearly showed which party was stronger overall. But Bal Thackeray’s charisma and Pramod Mahajan’s focus on Delhi rather than the state, allowed the Sena to prosper at the BJP’s expense. This has ended.
The Shiv Sena is not a conventional party and does not even bother with a proper manifesto. Without the support of the BJP and the RSS , the Sena will wither. The Congress defeat in Maharashtra will bring up more voices to challenge the strategy (such as it exists) of the Gandhi family to counter Mr Modi. So far, they have not really shown any stomach for a proper fight and do not seem to have the hunger that Mr Modi does.
When the losses of Maharashtra and Haryana come, the Prime Minister will be two steps further along on his mission to deliver a Congress-mukt Bharat.
Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist
