Assembly election results 2019: Breaking down the verdict: What the election results mean for the key players
The Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance will form the government in Maharashtra — but the win is not as resounding as the BJP, in particular, expected. Haryana has been the biggest surprise in the elections, throwing up a hung assembly.
The Maharashtra and Haryana state elections will have implications for the political fortunes of a range of national and state leaders. Here is a snapshot of what it means for them:
Narendra Modi
PM Modi remains India’s most popular leader. Modi campaigned vigorously in both elections, addressing 16 rallies. He made it national and spoke about the Centre’s moves in the past five months, including the decision to nullify Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir. He also spoke about how the states would have the advantage of a “double-engine”, with him at the Centre and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments at the state level. His decision of appointing two relatively low-key leaders as CMs of Maharashtra and Haryana in 2014 was a gamble. It has paid off in the former, but not so in the latter. The Haryana results, in particular, will cause concern. There are economic issues on the ground which are now becoming more prominent — and the Modi government will have to address them. It also shows that local issues continue to matter and national issues alone cannot be a substitute, and reliance on only him as the party’s mascot has its limits.
For full coverage of Haryana, Maharashtra assembly elections 2019, Click here.
Amit Shah
These were the first set of state elections since Shah took over as home minister, while doubling up as the party president. Shah was minutely involved with the campaigns in both states. Shah, too, campaigned actively. While the results vindicate, in Maharashtra in particular, the work done by him in building the organisation, the limited scale of the victory and the inability to get a majority in Haryana will disappoint Shah. This also sets up a greater challenge for working president JP Nadda, who is set to take over as the party chief early next year. Make no mistake: Shah will remain the party’s key election strategist and the country’s second most powerful leader. But Shah may need to go back to the drawing board, for the party’s calculation of consolidating non-dominant castes is now leading to a backlash from dominant castes, as evident by the voting behaviour of Jats in Haryana. It also shows that his focus on issues such as Kashmir and the National Register of Citizens has limitations.
WATCH | Why assembly election results spell introspection for both Congress and BJP
Devendra Fadnavis
The elections signal the emergence of Fadnavis as one of the BJP’s most important regional leaders. A Brahmin from Nagpur who was seen as a lightweight, Fadnavis’s shrewd political management saw him neutralise political rivals, win over antagonistic caste groups to some extent, and seek to broaden the BJP’s appeal by co-opting leaders from the Opposition. The results will be a somewhat mixed bag. He is all set to become Maharashtra’s second-longest serving chief minister. But he had expected to score a higher number of seats, which in turn would have given him greater power in running the state. He will continue to need to accommodate both the Shiv Sena, and deal with a more energised Opposition. Given the state’s size, resources, and political importance, expect to see the continued rise of Fadnavis but challenges will persist.
Sonia Gandhi
This was the first set of polls since Sonia Gandhi’s return to the Congress as its interim president. She inherited a difficult situation. The party had suffered a rout in the Lok Sabha for the second consecutive time. And there was limited time to prepare for the state polls. She did show a degree of decisiveness, belated as it was, in giving Bhupinder Singh Hooda the charge of Haryana - it paid dividends. But the overall verdict does not address the crisis in the Congress, the inability of the current national leadership to mount a challenge to Modi at the national level, and the continued attrition from the party ranks. Maharashtra will dampen the morale of the party rank and file, where the NCP has now replaced it as the primary opposition, and while Haryana has established the role of local influential leaders, questions about the relevance of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the party will persist.
Rahul Gandhi
The verdict has once again exposed the limitations of Rahul Gandhi’s leadership. While Gandhi quit as party president after the Lok Sabha polls, he remains a key decision-maker and the public face of the Congress. Gandhi left the campaigning too late, addressing just seven rallies. He also raised issues such as Rafale, which had limited traction. And it reflects poorly on him that he marginalised Hooda, who eventually delivered. When Gandhi quit, there was a sense that he would move from an organisational role to working on the ground building a movement against the BJP. But that has been missing too. It is thus not clear what Gandhi’s future role would be, how he plans to reinvent his own image, and if this verdict will cement his resolve to stay away from the organisation or return to it.
Sharad Pawar
One of the veterans of Indian politics, the Nationalist Congress Party’s Sharad Pawar, fought vigorously, despite his old age and fragile health. But Pawar was facing one of the most serious challenges of his career - his family was divided, local satraps had quit, the BJP was making inroads in his stronghold of western Maharashtra, and his own social base of Marathas was appearing to switch ranks. All of this eventually played out, but it is to the credit of the party and Pawar that it emerged as the third force, overshadowing its erstwhile senior partner, the Congress, and in fact, even improving its 2014 performance. He will be the Opposition’s prime face in the state and his role as an elder in the national Opposition will grow.
Uddhav and Aaditya Thackeray
This election is a mixed bag for the Thackeray father-son duo. They have left the splinter from the Sena, Raj Thackeray, far behind, and will be a part of the government. The fact that BJP did not win on its own increases its leverage in power sharing. Aaditya Thackeray, who also became the first member of the family to contest elections, won comfortably, and is expected to play a role in the government. But the fact that the BJP is the senior partner in the alliance will continue to rankle. This will have longer-term implications for the Sena and it will have to eventually choose whether it wants to reconcile itself to this status or seek to carve a distinct role.
Bhupinder Singh Hooda
The two-time chief minister of Haryana and one of the Congress’s most influential leaders in north India, Bhupinder Hooda has spent most of the past five years fighting his own party. He also spent time on the ground, doing multiple yatras, to keep up the connect with his support base. It was only in September that Sonia Gandhi got him back to a leadership role in the state. Hooda has shown how the party’s “old guard” has the appetite, resources and will to put up a fight. By consolidating his Jat base, picking local candidates shrewdly, managing caste alliances, Hooda made Haryana polls a lot closer than expected -- and showed the potential to challenge BJP exists if the local ingredients are in place. The next test for him is in political negotiations and whether he can show the same skills to form a non-BJP government.
Dushyant Chautala
The Haryana results mark the arrival of Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) as the inheritor of the Devi Lal legacy in the state. A party formed just last year, as a splinter from the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), it has been able to emerge as an important third force in the polls, and could play possibly the role of a swing force. It also marks the possible end of political career of Om Prakash Chautala, who is currently convicted and in prison. His INLD’s Jat support base appears to have entirely shifted to the JJP. In his early 30s, Dushyant Chautala could well fill the space of Haryana’s regional force in the years to come.
Manohar Lal Khattar
When Khattar, a Punjabi, was appointed CM in the Jat-dominated polity of Haryana; it was a surprise. A leader with no administrative experience, he stumbled on law and order issues in the first few years. But Khattar sought to carve out an image by projecting a degree of probity in a state marked by cronyism and corruption. But this clearly did not work. Let alone the stated target of 75 seats, he failed to get to the halfway mark. Irrespective of whether he becomes CM, the results expose the party’s vulnerabilities in the state, the continued anger of Jats, and local anti-incumbency issues. Khattar would be a disappointed man, and the party leadership would be seeking answers.