(2/5) Why BJP lost seats?

 

Hi everybody. Welcome to the second part of the election analysis. 

Take a look at this map.

This is the result of the 2019 Lok Sabha Election. BJP won a massive mandate of 303 seats. They won in places that we never expected the BJP to be a driving force.

But something happened in the 2024 Lok Sabha election that changed the BJP's fortunes. They only won 240 seats, failing to cross the majority mark, and must take the NDA allies' help to form the government.

So, what changed in these 5 years, where did BJP go wrong, and what caused them a slim majority.

I have 5 reasons to justify this. So stay with me.

1. HINDUTVA

BJP has always played the Hindutva card in elections. People voted for the BJP in hopes of constructing the Ram Temple, and protecting them from Minority appeasement. And BJP did get gains from this agenda. 

In 2019, solely due to this, the BJP won 62 seats out of 80 in UP, 18 seats in West Bengal, 21 seats in Maharashtra, 25 seats in Karnataka, 28 in Madhya Pradesh, 10 in Haryana, 7 in Delhi. They also opened new opportunities in Odisha and Telangana.

In January 2024 PM Modi inaugurated the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, in 2022 the Kashi Vishwanath corridor, in 2023 the Ramanuja Statue in AP. He visited Thirupati 3 times. He did an underwater journey to Dwaraka. Visited a temple in Tamil Nadu. All done and said why did he lose these many seats? And especially why BJP lost Faizabad in which the Ram Temple is located?

Well reasons are there

Look at this image. This was shared by the BJP Karnataka account in X during the campaign. Here PM Modi is taller than Lord Ram and it symbolizes that Modi is greater than Lord Ram. It was as if Lord Ram was not the center of attention but it was Modi. This angered a lot of people that their faith is being insulted here.

Next, in one of the interviews, Modi said he was not born biologically and said he was sent by God.

BJP leader in Odisha said the Lord Jagannath is a devotee of Modi!!

All these statements have insulted the Hindus in some way.

But what caused Ayodhya to turn to the Samajwadi Party.

Well due to the construction of Ram Mandir,

Large-scale houses and shops were destroyed to make the Rampath without issuing any notice.

Old important places like Sita ka Rasoi(Sita's kitchen), Kaushalya Sadan(Kaushalya's room), and Kaikeyi kop Bhawan (Kaikeyi's Bhawan) were all destroyed.

Rampant corruption in Land dealing.

Small temples are also destroyed.

BJP clearly took the Hindus of the country for granted. They made a Prime Minister who is just a human to look like a larger-than-life character. The BJP thought with Hindutva, the country will vote for them by just saying "Jai Shri Ram". For the people who are saying this is Sanatana Dharma, well I don't think destroying people's homes and destroying temples are a part of it.

BJP's Hyderabad candidate Madhvi Latha was seen giving hate speeches against the Muslims there forgetting that Hyderabad has 60% of the people who belong to the Muslim community.

PM Modi attacked RJD for eating mutton in "Shravan" month when Hindus don't eat any Non Veg foods. He accused them of having a "Mughal" mentality.  In Rajasthan, he also tried to accuse the Congress of a fake wealth redistribution. He warned that if Congress comes to power they will take all the "Mangalsutras" of the women and give it to the Muslim community.

Anti-Muslim speeches, insult on Hinduism, and giving Modi a larger-than-life image than Hinduism itself have backfired the BJP largely.

2. WASHING MACHINE POLITICS:

What is this washing machine politics? And why did it turn the missiles toward the BJP? Let me explain with a small example. Former CM of Maharashtra and Congress Leader Ashok Chavan was accused of the Adarsh Housing Scam. Basically, this is a government scheme where the wives of the deceased Army men get a house for free. But Ashok Chavan gave houses to his own families rather than to the widows. PM Modi in 2014 slammed the then UPA government for not taking action against him.

Now 10 years later when Ashok Chavan joins the BJP, suddenly all the allegations are pulled back. BJP leader calls him a reputed and clean leader. Now how do you call a politician who has allegations of scam and now that he is in your party the accusations are taken to a toss.

BJP called Ajit Pawar as the commander of corruption but now that he is in NDA, he got the finance portfolio in the Maharashtra government. The ED and CBI cases on cases were there on Suvendhu Adhikari of TMC and Himanta Biswa Sarma of Congress and now that suddenly they switched sides you have suppressed the cases. 

But people are intelligent. It backfired the BJP because the BJP took the burden of Congress. Why didn't the people vote for Congress? Because they had corrupted leaders. Now that those corrupted leaders are in BJP the anger on Congress has just shifted to the BJP.

 

In the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections, 25% of the candidates fielded by the BJP were defectors. And 62% of them have lost their deposits. Now this shows that people didn't like it. And if you want the numbers 106 out of 435 candidates and 61 candidates of the BJP lost their seats. In 2019  they won 303 seats

(Just do 303-242)

Do you understand the math now?

3. NOT USING RSS TO ITS FULLEST POTENTIAL:

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been an asset to the BJP since its founding days. It gave a lot of stalwart leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi Nitin Gadkari, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh, Pramod Mahajan, Manohar Parrikar, Kalyan Singh, Rajnath Singh, and of course Narendra Modi and Amit Shah and many other countless abled leaders. It helped the BJP in forming its first government in Gujarat in 1985, UP in 1993, Madhya Pradesh in 1995, Rajasthan in 1998, Maharashtra in 1997, Delhi in 1999, Karnataka in 2007, and  Tripura in 2018.

RSS also brought up leaders in places like Tamil Nadu, and Kerala where BJP's presence was negligible. This was because RSS was always in the ground and with the people. Their workers know what is the ground reality of the people. Not only that they train them to be an able administrator. There is no space for nepotism in the RSS and it is based only on skills that they elect you to a higher level.

Now an organization that is the main reason why BJP has grown was ignored by its own invention. Remember the 106 seats where BJP had fielded defectors and undeserved candidates. If they had placed RSS-affiliated people BJP would have crossed the 370 mark and the NDA would have crossed 400. Moreover, BJP President JP Nadda even said that the BJP has become strong and that they don't need the RSS anymore. They thought they could win solely with the popularity of PM Modi forgetting who made PM Modi.

This overconfidence has left the party to lose seats where they shouldn't have lost. A massive political blunder.

4. THE BRAND MODI

To be honest, this is not even a reason. But the Indian Media wants you to believe it. This is because, in 2019, the candidates of the BJP didn't have any big achievements in their tenures. BJP tried to run a campaign where they said "Don't see the MP's face just vote for Modi". Now let me say this clearly. I am not questioning Modi's popularity. This time we are seeing cracks. 

Smriti Irani who won Amethi defeating Rahul Gandhi in 2019 solely due to Modi's popularity and ignorance of Rahul, has lost the seat this time to Kishori Lal of Congress. Why did this happen?  Because Smriti Irani was seen more on TV than ground. No significant development in Amethi. While Kishori Lal was connected to the ground roots of Amethi. Now candidates cannot win in the name of Modi and they have to perform something to gain people's trust. 

Even Narendra Modi himself had some setbacks on his home turf Varanasi. In 2014, the Prime Minister got 56.37% of the votes, in 2019, he got 63.57% of the votes but it has gone down in 2024 and he only won 47.32% of the votes

So you see the decline of the vote share. Narendra Modi is losing his Teflon-coated image. 

5. ANTI INCUMBENCY

This is a reason that the media doesn't want to show you. Media houses and other so-called political analysts claimed that Modi would be unaffected by the anti-incumbency factor despite being the Prime Minister for 10 years. There is no widespread anger against him or the BJP. Though it is right to some extent, Anti-incumbency has affected him. 

As we said in the first part of the blog,  All states were going through massive unemployment. Unemployment rates were skyrocketing. Massive job vacancies. 1.6 lakh government job vacancies all over India. Inflation was hitting people. Urban areas were not affected by it but rural areas were deeply affected. No promises made to the middle classes have been fulfilled. Paper leak cases in Rajasthan, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra are increasing day by day and have posed a question mark on the student's future. Farmers were promised that their incomes would double but income has reduced to half.

 Action on climate change which resulted in Joshimutt of Uttarakhand sinking, Sikkim seeing floods,  Chennai and Bengaluru also seeing floods, Ladakh's ice glaciers melting, Goa's beaches rising temperatures, Lakshadweep's coral reefs threat, Rajasthan and Gujarat seeing heavy rains, Maharashtra seeing droughts, Odisha, West Bengal getting regular cyclones, Assam and Nagaland getting floods, hot summer in Delhi and UP, and a volcanic eruption recently in Manipur. 

Suppressing protests and failure to control violent situations. The BJP Government has been ignoring the Ladakh protest. Wrestlers who won medals for India, when protested suddenly became anti-nationals, and farmers who were expressing their distress and were demanding MSP were called Khalistanis. The Agniveer scheme which could have been reviewed and would take only 2 out of 10 people for Army selection has not been reviewed properly. And when protests took place BJP didn't even take an eye on them.  There has been a huge dissent against the CAA but people were called "Urban Naxals". And of course, the one-year-long Manipur violence which could have been controlled

was not controlled at the right time. The census should have been done in 2021 and still, the Modi Government hasn't done that.

And controlling the institutions to some extent and the electoral bonds scam has given the BJP a big setback.

So these were some of the important reasons why BJP lost some seats even though they have won the elections and emerged as the single largest party. There are many but these are significant.

This ends the political analysis of the Election Results. As I said there are 5 parts to this election series. We have covered two parts.

Part 3 is how will the new but weak BJP will run the government. Will PM Modi hold the coalition or parties would shift to the INDI alliance and form government with them. And also the cabinet ministries allocation. And policies we can expect.

Part 4 is about the future of the INDI alliance. Can Congress hold the allies together until 2029? What will the opposition focus on and what it should focus?

And the Part 5 will be on what's in for us

  

So stay tuned for the new ones. Interesting data points facts and nuances are there. 

Thank you for reading. Goodbye