Congress won a handsome victory in Telangana, dislodging two-term CM K Chandrasekhar Rao of BRS to notch up its second success in the south after its win in Karnataka earlier this year.However, the victory in the revenue-surplus state can only be poor consolation for the losses suffered by the party in the heartland, of which at least two were unexpected not just for Congress but some neutral observers as well.
PM Narendra Modi Arrives at BJP Headquarters in Delhi as Party Wins Rajasthan Assembly Election 2023, Leads in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh
Coming at a time when the battle for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections has already been joined, Sunday’s outcome reinforced BJP’s political pre-eminence, at once boosting Modi from the frontrunner for 2024 to probable winner.
The successes were achieved in the face of heavy odds. Barring exceptions like home minister Amit Shah, the party had given up on Chhattisgarh, where the governing Congress appeared to be in an unassailable position. In Rajasthan, BJP had for the first time decided not to project its CM face and the bold break looked increasingly risky in the face of Congress’s late populism-fuelled rally under shrewd CM Ashok Gehlot.
While it may now appear to be paranoia, given the benefit of hindsight, even senior party leaders feared it would succumb to anti-incumbency in MP where BJP has been in office for two decades save a brief interlude of 15 months.
There were other challenges too, such as Rahul Gandhi‘s intriguing swing towards caste politics as a calculated tactic to woo the numerically preponderant OBCs and wean them away from Modi’s embrace.
The results showed that BJP had convincingly defeated the odds by leveraging Modi’s personal popularity, which remains impressively robust in an era marked by public fickleness and ever-escalating aspirations, even as he is about to complete a decade in the country’s top political office. Modi led from the front, energetically campaigning on a platform that has now gelled into a powerful blend of development, welfare, muscular nationalism, Hindutva and the promise of a resurgent Bharat destined to be a global force – a catch-all proposition which, thanks to the successful projection of the steps taken by the regime, invests ‘Modi ki guarantee’ with the necessary credibility.