Gujarat CM Narendra Modi sounded the bugle for the 2014 general election with the BJP sweeping all six seats in the state to which byelections were held recently. This came as a severe setback to the Congress, which held all six seats.
This Gujarat triumph is also a major boost to Mr Modi, now positioning himself to be BJP’s standard-bearer in the coming Lok Sabha elections. The Gujarat CM also tried to project the victory in his state as a referendum on the 2014 polls, saying: “The BJP’s emphatic victory and the Congress’ defeat in two Lok Sabha seats is in a way a message of public anger and an ultimatum to the Congress.”
If Mr Modi continued to decimate the Congress in Gujarat, his NDA arch-rival Nitish Kumar, Bihar chief minister and JD(U) leader, received a body blow with his party losing the Maharajganj Lok Sabha seat to the Rashtriya Janata Dal. RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav was seen roaring again after a very long time.
It was bad news for the Congress in West Bengal too: the party finished a poor third in the Howrah Lok Sabha seat, where the ruling Trinamul Congress secured a comfortable victory after a close fight with the CPI(M). It was a litmus test for TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee as the party not only contested on its own but the poll was fought under the shadow of the Saradha chit fund scam which has rocked her government. In 2009, the TMC had been in an alliance with the Congress.
The only consolation for the Congress on Wednesday came from Maharashtra with the party retaining the Yavatmal Assembly constituency.
In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party won the Handia Assembly seat where both the BJP and the Congress lost their deposits. While the BJP got around 2,500 votes, the Congress secured just 3,800 votes. The indications from UP, considered the “gateway to Delhi”, seem clear. This state, with 80 Lok Sabha seats, will test the electoral skills and charisma of the heavyweights of both the BJP and the Congress, which could well be Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. The two parties are banking on them to regain their votebanks in UP, dominated by regional satraps Mulayam Singh Yadav of SP and Mayawati of the BSP. For the record, the two national parties’ combined voteshare in Handia in last year’s Assembly poll was less than five per cent.
Hit hard in Gujarat, Bihar and UPthe Congress tried hard to downplay the results. “These are local elections. They will have no impact on the 2014 general elections,” party spokesman Sandeep Dikshit said.
Wresting all six seats from the Congress in Gujarat, the BJP won Lok Sabha byelections in Porbandar and Banaskantha by margins of over 1.28 lakh and 71,000 votes respectively; and won Assembly contests in Limbadi, Morva Hadaf, Jetpur and Doraji.
In Bihar, it was time for the lantern to shine, with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD winning the Maharajganj Lok Sabha seat by a margin of over 1.37 lakh votes. If it was an electoral triumph for the RJD, it was also a “moral victory” for the Modi camp over Nitish Kumar, who has been repeatedly targeting the Gujarat CM over his PM ambitions. Not letting go the opportunity, BJP leaders in Bihar took a dig at Nitish Kumar by claiming that his “unsavoury comments on Narendrabhai” was one of the major factors behind the JD(U)’s defeat. The JD(U), on the other hand, said the BJP was to blame for the loss.