Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial during his meditation. (ANI Photo)
Political observers are yet to assess whether the 2024 electoral setback will modify PM Narendra Modi’s unilateral style of functioning. Modi stood firm with Ajit Pawar and Praful Patel in not allocating a Cabinet post for the NCP (Ajit Pawar). The PM is aware that the discredited Ajit needs the BJP more than he needs him. Sharad Pawar is in no mood to accept Ajit back.
But within his own party, Modi is now feeling the pressure from RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who has publicly called for consensus in taking decisions. Both Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Nitin Gadkari are in senior posts in the Cabinet because of the RSS’s insistence. Gadkari reportedly vetoed the suggestion that he be put in charge of the Maharashtra Assembly elections. An RSS functionary is believed to have conveyed that if Chouhan was not inducted into the Cabinet, he should be appointed party president, a move unacceptable to the Modi camp. At the swearing-in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the body language between Gadkari and Chouhan, and the PM’s loyalist ministers seemed a trifle stiff and awkward. The PM’s call to his supporters and party leaders to remove the suffix ‘Modi ka Parivar’ from their social media handles is also viewed as a response to Bhagwat’s call for team spirit and not individual self-aggrandisement.
Prognosis stable
Modi’s government, at least for now, appears more stable than the Opposition would like to believe. One suspects that Amit Shah, the master of manoeuvres, has already secretly lined up support from additional MPs, so that the government cannot be blackmailed by one or two smaller parties. When a former MP pleaded with Nitish Kumar to insist that someone trustworthy from the JD(U) be appointed to a key Parliamentary post to ensure fair play, he replied cynically that his nominees to the BJP government had in the past been won over by the ruling party.
Remarkable recovery
After dismal results in 2014 and 2019, the Congress was virtually written off in this election in UP, Bihar and Maharashtra. Its allies were able to bully the party into accepting far fewer seats than the rightful share claimed by the national party in state alliances. Ironically, the Congress’s performance in 2024 was better than its allies in both Maharashtra (13 out of 17) and Bihar (three out of nine). Even in UP, it performed reasonably well (six out of 17). While its detractors claim it made impressive gains riding on the coat-tails of its allies, the party actually made an equally valuable contribution. Rahul Gandhi’s strong criticism of Modi’s communal remarks and the Congress’s position as a national party were key factors for Muslim voters in UP and elsewhere to stay with the INDIA bloc and to not get split up by supporting stray candidates from their community fielded by other parties, like the BSP, as has often happened in the past. Even in Assam’s Dhubri constituency, which has 70% Muslim electorate, formidable perfume king Badruddin Ajmal was defeated by Congress’s Rakibul Hussain by a margin of over 10 lakh votes.
Blowing my trumpet
I feel slightly chuffed for predicting accurately in three consecutive Inside Track columns that the supposedly invincible Modi would have a tough time reaching the halfway mark on his own. If I have a better-than-average record of predicting poll results over the years, without the voluminous data and manpower utilised by exit poll analysts who held forth on TV channels on June 1 evening, it suggests that something was wrong with either their methods or motives. They were certainly not thinking with an open mind.
This is one of the three valuable lessons I learnt as a cub reporter accompanying my boss to cover the 1971 Delhi Parliamentary polls. I watched silently as my senior made all the classic mistakes in poll coverage. He talked largely to so-called experts and party workers, and went into constituency caste breakdowns, voting trends, etc. Claiming to be a poll veteran, he brushed aside my timid murmurs that auto rickshaw drivers and the man on the street were certain that Indira Gandhi’s candidates would win from Delhi, even if the sitting MPs were stalwarts from the Jana Sangh and Congress candidates were virtual lamp posts.
The three rules of the poll prediction game that have stood me in good stead ever since are: talk to the man on the street, don’t let your own preferences cloud your judgement and never take anything for granted just because the majority says it must be so. There were enough indicators after phase I of the polls that the usually clued in BJP camp was rattled. Few stopped to question why RSS and BJP workers were less visible on the ground than in the previous polls.
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