The sweep in the three Hindi heartland states by the BJP has three clear implications: 2024 is now a done deal for the party with a 200-seat pole position in the Lok Sabha battle, the INDIA bloc could be a non-starter with the Congress position itself in peril, and the caste census ‘bogey’ has flopped, senior BJP leaders have told News18.
BJP has won big in Madhya Pradesh and achieved comfortable majority in both Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The BJP also won eight seats in Telangana, with one of its candidate Venkata Ramana Reddy defeating both the outgoing chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and Congress CM face Revanth Reddy from Kamareddy in a moral victory. The impact of this will be seen on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as the BJP is looking for a sweep in the Hindi heartland states of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Delhi, Jharkhand, and the three states it has now won on Sunday.
At least two BJP leaders said this means that the party now starts in a 200-seat pole position from the heartland with Congress on the back-foot. Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat with 106 Lok Sabha seats together, are the citadels of the BJP where it aims to win at least 100 seats together. The party is now also looking at a clean sweep in the 65 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, much like in 2019 when it won 62 of these seats. The other sweeps for BJP are expected from Delhi, Haryana, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
BJP’s march past the majority mark could come from key states of Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka and Odisha.
The second big implication of the results on Sunday is that the Congress position has been weakened in the INDIA camp and the same could be a non-starter if the party intends to play big brother.
BJP leaders say INDIA partners like TMC, RJD, JDU or the Samajwadi Party will not be willing to part with too many seats in West Bengal, Bihar or UP to the Congress, drastically reducing the number of seats that the Congress fights in all in 2024.
“INDIA is a non-starter in the all-important state of Uttar Pradesh after Kamal Nath insulted the SP in Madhya Pradesh. The bargaining power of Congress in seat-sharing is down," a BJP leader said.
The third big implication is that the caste census ploy of the Congress has proved to be a bogey as people have refused to vote on the promise of a caste census in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Congress had borrowed the idea from its regional partners in Bihar, RJD and the JDU, but there seems to be no resonance for it even in the OBC-heavy states that went to polls now in the Hindi heartland.
BJP leaders say that the main issue of the Lok Sabha 2024 battle is anyway for a third term for Narendra Modi and the atmosphere for it will be set by the Ram Temple inauguration in Ayodhya in January 2024.
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