10 key takeaways from the 2022 assembly elections

The 2022 assembly elections have changed the trajectory of Indian politics for many decades to come. Indeed, these are perhaps the most significant assembly elections since the 2014 general elections for several reasons and will be remembered for a long time. From hints about who will succeed Prime Minister Modi to who will succeed the Congress Party as the country’s principal opposition, here are ten key takeaways from these elections.

1. A saffron-clad PM in our lifetimes?

Yogi Adityanath has scripted history. Never before has a Chief Minister who completed their five-year term in Uttar Pradesh been re-elected. Yogi was not the party’s face for the 2017 assembly elections and was picked after the mandate. This time, it’s a mandate of his own. Besides being historic, it is a decisive mandate and not just an instance of barely scraping through. The fact that it comes less than a year after the BJP was at its weakest since 2014, in the wake of the second wave of the pandemic and the agitations at Delhi’s border, signals that the mandate for Yogi Adityanath in India’s most politically crucial state has revived the party. That we are likely to see a saffron-clad Prime Minister in our lifetimes is increasingly becoming a likely scenario.

2. AAP as the principal opposition?

With the Congress Party failing to return to power in Punjab, one of the three states it held, the Congress Party has now been reduced to two state governments in the country. Both the states go to polls before the 2024 general elections, and the scenario that the Congress Party would have to go into 2024 without a single state government is increasingly becoming more realistic. Besides, the party has failed to make a mark in the two states where it was up against the BJP in these elections, Uttarakhand, and Goa, despite visible anti-incumbency against the ruling party. As its decline continues, the Mamata Banerjee led Trinamool Congress which had sought to replace it now seems to have been edged out by the Aam Aadmi Party. The AAP’s sweep of Punjab signals that it is indeed capable of breaking into new territory and will probably emerge as the BJP’s principal rival in the long run. If a decade or two down the line Indian politics were to have two poles in the form of Yogi Adityanath on the one side and Arvind Kejriwal on the other, this election will be remembered as the point where it all began.

Also Read: The fall of giant leaders in Punjab shows infighting and thirst for party positions can be cataclysmic

3. Does the media do this deliberately?

The BJP’s win in Uttar Pradesh is not a small one. In fact, it is a wave election, just like the previous three elections. However, until the exit polls emerged, many journalists gave us the impression that we were witnessing a neck and neck battle, with some even giving the Samajwadis an edge. Considering this was a wave that even a blind man could have seen, it is shameful that this class of people used their platforms to lie about ground realities much like they did in 2014, 2017 and 2019.

4. Who’s the man of the match?

This election cycle can have several claimants to the ‘man of the match’ position. The obvious choice is Yogi Adityanath, but despite his re-election being historic, it was a foregone conclusion. Bhagwant Mann or Arvind Kejriwal can also be legitimate claimants, but considering they were expected to sweep Punjab even in 2017, this is a result that has come five years late for them. Due to these factors, I would have considered Pushkar Dhami to be the man of the match. Brought in as the Chief Minister months before the elections, and that too as the third Chief Minister of the BJP in its five-year tenure, he was up against every odds. This is a story that was completely missed by the media, which tracked Charanjit Channi and thought that he would script a historic re-election for the Congress Party in Punjab despite being para dropped at the last hour. However, the Channi phenomenon has fallen flat, and it is Dhami who ensured that the BJP not just remained in the game but returned with a decisive mandate. However, as the trends crystallize, Dhami has lost his own seat despite delivering the state for the BJP and is unlikely to remain the Chief Minister. Perhaps there is no clear man of the match this time around.

5. Where do these elections leave the BJP?

Less than a year ago, as the second wave of the pandemic ripped through India and protestors blocked highways around Delhi, it seemed like the BJP’s upward trajectory since the advent of Narendra Modi on the national stage was finally coming to an end. The party has not just recovered from its lowest point since 2014 but has returned with a bang across the country. With such a decisive mandate in Uttar Pradesh, the state that determines the course of national politics, and with the opposition being more divided than ever, the window that the opposition had to end the BJP’s dominance has closed. The window had opened in the first-place courtesy of a once-in-a-century pandemic, and therefore, it is unlikely that the opposition will get another such window anytime soon. The BJP is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

6. The implication of BJP getting re-elected in Manipur?

The last three Congress Chief Ministers to get re-elected all belonged to the North-eastern states. No congress Chief minister after Mukul Sangma’s re-election in 2013 was ever re-elected. After the BJP won the Assam elections of 2016, the NEDA was formed under Himanta Biswa Sarma’s leadership with the explicit goal of forming governments either belonging to the BJP or its allies across the Northeast. This was achieved within two years, as a region considered to be the Congress Party’s bastion became the first region in the country to become ‘Congress-Mukt’. The BJP was re-elected in Assam last year, however, how the NEDA experiment would fare across the Northeast remained to be seen. With the NEDA returning to power in Manipur, one can safely conclude that the NEDA has been amongst the most successful experiments in Indian politics since 2014.

Also Read: 3 reasons why BJP will sweep Manipur elections

7. What kind of leadership works?

This election once again points out that one cannot change ground realities because they have grown up in a particular household and get all the media attention the moment they land in Lucknow and proclaim that they have arrived to change things. Similarly, just because your video reading out a WhatsApp forward about fascism in parliament goes viral, does not mean you can enter a state where your party has no base whatsoever and think that you will make it a bastion overnight. The most glaring mistake though is when a party in power like the Congress in Punjab actually ends up believing that a man like Navjot Singh Sidhu can save them. This election once again demonstrates the importance of choosing substance over noise.

8. What happens in Maharashtra now?

Maharashtra remains the most politically volatile state in the country ever since a mandate in the name of Devendra Fadnavis was stolen by a long-time BJP ally. With the Shiv Sena fast losing ground since it has hugely disappointed its committed vote-base, it will look to draw lessons from Nitish Kumar in 2017. Kumar, a long-time ally of the BJP, had formed a government with arch-rival Lalu Prasad Yadav in 2015. Realizing that the political currents were unfavourable after the 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections five years ago, he returned to the BJP-led NDA. This proved to be a shrewd move, allowing him to complete his tenure and win another term. In all likelihood, the BJP will see overtures from Uddhav in the coming months since it is a question of political survival in the long run. However, unlike Kumar, BJP’s former allies have crossed many lines. The fences won’t mend easily.

9. Who will be the Lutyens Media’s new messiah?

With Akhilesh Yadav retreating into oblivion once again, the Congress further weakening and Mamata Banerjee not being able to strike a chord outside Bengal, the Lutyens media will look for a new messiah whom they will project as the warrior who will bring the Modi wave to an end. With Kejriwal’s stock on the rise, he seems like the obvious option. However, most assembly elections before 2024 are direct BJP-Congress contests, wherein the AAP will certainly try to play spoiler. Already the AAP is making inroads in states like Gujarat but at the cost of splitting the opposition vote. Therefore, in order not to put opposition unity in peril, the Lutyens media might back a leader like Telangana CM KCR, who has become a vocal critic of the BJP of late. KCR will directly confront the BJP in his bid to retain Telangana at the end of 2023, right before the 2024 elections. Therefore, he might fit the Lutyens media’s bill perfectly.

10. What are the BJP’s future prospects in Punjab?

The BJP has been vastly unpopular in Punjab of late. However, despite having no skin in the game, the BJP used this opportunity to drive the Congress Party to the fringes of Punjab politics. Whether it was through the alliance with the Captain, the Prime Minister’s outreach to the Sikh community or the Channi government emerging as the main culprit when the Prime Minister’s cavalcade was attacked, the BJP played a part in not just dethroning but decimating the Congress in Punjab. The BJP is well aware that the moment any state becomes a three-cornered contest, Congress gradually disappears by default. Although its own future in Punjab is uncertain, it has quietly pushed Congress out of yet another state.