BJP looks for 2024 soar after ending 2023 on happy note

Following the party's sweep of assembly elections in three Hindi heartland states against the odds, the BJP's brain trust is now busy game-planning as to how it can improve on its 2019 Lok Sabha election tally of 303 seats. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party has generally had more good years than bad since 2014 but few have still ended on a happier note for the party than 2023, as it steps into the new year of national elections, full of hope of retaining power at the Centre under Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a third straight term.

The party's big victory in the recent state polls has only reaffirmed its strong position and, its leaders believe, a number of upcoming developments will further boost its prospects.

The BJP and RSS affiliates have already succeeded in building a fervour around the consecration of Lord Ram's idol in Ayodhya on January 22 and there is a view that the Uniform Civil Code can be rolled out in a state or two before the polls to make the electoral turf still more favourable for the ruling party.

Following the party's sweep of assembly elections in three Hindi heartland states against the odds, the BJP's brain trust is now busy game-planning as to how it can improve on its 2019 Lok Sabha election tally of 303 seats.

It is not unusual these days to find its senior leaders talking about the possibility of a total nearer to 350 than 300 in 2024, an optimism fuelled not in the least by an opposition alliance which has come out with no agenda, joint programme or a visible leadership since its members named their grouping INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) way back in July.

It was also a year when brand Modi, strong as it has always been, held sway like never before in state elections, rooting out the Congress from entire north India save for tiny Himachal Pradesh and cutting down to size the few remaining regional satraps of the BJP.

With its win in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the BJP now rules entire north-west India, its impregnable fortress in the Lok Sabha elections since 2014, except for Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and the national capital.

This region of 10 contiguous states and the union territory of Delhi account for 258 seats, and the BJP had won 200 of them at a strike rate of nearly 80 per cent in the 2019 polls.

The Congress had hoped that it could realign the political calculus in these states, especially the Hindi-speaking ones, with a good show in the assembly polls, but it was instead left surprised as the party lost power even in Chhattisgarh against all expectations.

While Maharashtra, which sends 48 members to the Lok Sabha, remains a challenge for the BJP, its leaders have expressed confidence that the party will do better than 2019 in the north-west region, mostly on the account of Modi's wide acceptability and the party's unmatched organisational muscle.

Midway through the year it had appeared that the Congress, which was the BJP's main challengers in most state polls, has finally found a way to deal with the ruling party's might resting on its centralised campaign and grander narrative in which regional issues and leaders invariably play a secondary role.

The Congress handed a crushing defeat to the BJP in Karnataka, a rare win for the party in a direct contest between the two rivals, with its campaign dominated by its two state heavyweights Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar.

It is a reflection on the BJP's organisational efficiency combined with its leadership's self-belief and willingness to make bold moves that defy conventional wisdom that the party since then managed to turn the tide in two states -- Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh -- where the going had appeared tough for it.

It took a series of measures, including fielding Union ministers in the assembly polls and naming candidates for difficult seats months in advance, to blunt the perceived anti-incumbency against its government headed by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh.

In Chhattisgarh, the party tapped into the undercurrent of resentment against the Bhupesh Baghel-led Congress government's tilt towards a section of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and played up its alleged corruption to stun the Congress in the polls.

The BJP also expectedly won Rajasthan.

Following an overwhelming mandate, the party's top brass pushed the claims of Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje and Raman Singh aside in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and installed fresh faces as chief ministers.

The snub to Chouhan, the BJP's longest serving chief minister, stood out as he had remained a popular if diminished figure but the party took a considered decision to usher in a new generation of leaders.

BJP leaders believe that the caste census plank wielded by the opposition, especially the Congress, has also been blunted as its main rival lost badly in the Hindi heartland where the issue should have maximum resonance.

They claim it has now been reduced to a state-specific issue, a reference to Bihar where OBC satraps Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav remain a strong force.

Former British prime minister Harold Wilson's quip that "a week is a long time in politics" is an oft-quoted witticism and the Lok Sabha election announcement is still around 10 weeks away, going by the Election Commission's declaration of polls on March 10 in 2019.

However, as a BJP leader said following the party's two day national office-bearers meet to strategise on the polls that the challenge now for them is to do better than the 2019 results and further marginalise the opposition.