Results script dramatic twist in the national political story

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is back.

It is easy to suggest that the BJP hadn’t gone anywhere, for it had won enough seats in the Lok Sabha to form the government for the third time just this summer. By leading the party to this triumph, Narendra Modi had set himself to complete three full elected terms as Prime Minister, a feat no other leader has achieved. The basic political reality of who lived on Lok Kalyan Marg and worked from South Block hadn’t changed. The rest was just noise.

But it is also true that forming the government, retaining the same set of ministers, continuing with the same party leadership, and prioritising continuity over disruption still didn’t quite feel like a win. The political reality was stark: the BJP was down from 303 to 240 seats, the party morale was low, the Opposition was energised in Parliament, internal contradictions within the larger ideological family had begun to sharpen, the party’s vulnerabilities in its core areas of strength appeared more structural than circumstantial with the weakening of its multi-class and multi-caste coalition, and the BJP was expected to continue losing state elections till at least the end of 2025 in Bihar, where, too, the contest would be close.

And yet, a small state -- one that sends merely 2% of elected members to Lok Sabha, and whose population pales in comparison to the bigger states of north and central India -- has managed to reverse the political narrative, even if it would be premature to conclude that it has reversed the political tide. And in that lies the national significance of the outcome in Haryana where the BJP is returning to power for a third consecutive term.

Further up north, from Jammu & Kashmir, the outcome marks an electoral setback for the ruling party and reflects the continued divide between Jammu and Kashmir, but it may well end up marking a political and ideological success because the BJP has managed to create a new political reality and forced every major local political actor to accept it by participating in the elections.

How Haryana reframes national politicsThe BJP’s success in occupying a seat of power in Chandigarh is significant for it gives the party reins over a major business and agricultural powerhouse in the country that also is strategically located next to the capital.

But more significant is the fact that Haryana will help the party convey first and foremost to its own cadre that Narendra Modi’s BJP remains India’s most formidable election machine. It will help the party reinforce the ideological unity of the wider Sangh Parivar that did appear to show cracks during the Lok Sabha campaign but seemed to have been repaired for the state elections. It will help give the BJP’s managers the confidence that its political formula of consolidating non-dominant communities in a state where the belligerence of the dominant community appears threatening to others is still working -- for it was the coming together of the non-Jat communities that, at least partially, explains the Haryana outcome.

It gives both Modi and Amit Shah the ability to continue imposing their writ on the party, including choosing the next party chief, and exercise political judgment as they deem fit, as they did when they replaced Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini earlier this year. To be sure, even a setback in Haryana would not have changed Modi and Shah’s dominance, but it would have emboldened some voices within the party to create an oppositional mood to the leadership. It gives the BJP the confidence that despite a setback in the Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra -- it is the next big state to face assembly polls -- the party still has the ability to course-correct, register a strong presence, and perhaps even form the government. And it allows the party to send a message to the bureaucracy within, and Opposition outside, that even if the BJP isn’t hegemonic, it remains the dominant actor and is not going anywhere anytime soon.

For the Congress, Haryana is more than just another state-level loss, for it reflects that 99 seats in the Lok Sabha aren’t enough to overcome the structural deficiencies that are deeply embedded in the party’s functioning.

The situation could not have been more ripe for an outright win. Here was the party with its morale up after the relative success in the Lok Sabha elections. Here was a state where the incumbent had been in power for 10 years and appeared to be deeply unpopular. Here was a social landscape where farmers had expressed their disenchantment with the BJP on the streets, wrestlers had expressed their rage through one of the most powerful expressions of protests and national sporting heroes had made their political preferences clear, and where a large segment of the young who aspired to join the armed forces felt betrayed with the change in the terms of recruitment that Agnipath represented. Here was a political setup where the party had chosen to invest its faith in Bhupinder Singh Hooda, among the most shrewd and resourceful of the old guard.

And yet, the Congress wasn’t able to keep its house intact as Hooda’s rivalry with Kumari Selja hobbled party unity, fractured workers, and divided the Jat-Dalit base on the ground. The party wasn’t able to expand its appeal beyond select communities, and reach out to either the “upper castes” or the heterogeneous conglomeration of small backward communities. It wasn’t able to convince enough farmers or the young that their economic prospects were brighter under the Congress. And it wasn’t able to use the same fear-mongering tactics on reservations that worked well during the national elections again.

All of this may seem specific to Haryana, but the lack of party unity, the dominance of personal ambition, the rift within its own social base, and the limits of its social alliance reflect a deeper weakness that the Lok Sabha outcome may have blurred but hasn’t dissolved.

Kashmir’s mixed messageTo read a single national message from a political landscape as complex as Jammu & Kashmir would be a mistake given its unique political history. But here are five clear implications of the verdict.

One, just the fact that elections were held, voter turnout was high, and violence was relatively low is a big win for the Indian State. Every exercise in democratic decision-making in Kashmir bolsters India’s case internationally.

Two, the fact that elections were held and saw this level of participation in a political context where the Article 370 had been read down, the erstwhile state had been divided, and voting happened for the legislature of a Union territory — when none of this was deemed feasible at all five years ago given the complete crackdown on any political activity and the sullen mood on Kashmiri street — marks a huge achievement for the BJP. It was able to fulfil an ideological dream and change the constitutional reality of the state, yet push through a democratic exercise.

Three, the conduct of relatively normal elections and voter participation must not necessarily be treated as an outright endorsement of the constitutional changes by the Kashmiri street. The fact that the BJP didn’t win a single seat in the valley, that its proxies lost, that National Conference which has both opposed the constitutional changes and sought restoration of statehood immediately emerged as the single largest party, and that the People’s Democratic Party was resoundingly rejected largely because of its 2015 alliance with the BJP, indicates that the Centre must not over-read the political mandate of these elections.

Four, the elections show yet again that there remains a political divide between Jammu and Kashmir, and notwithstanding the disillusionment that people in Jammu also reportedly have felt in the past five years, the political acceptance for both the constitutional changes and for the BJP is much higher.

And finally, the fact that the BJP has now pushed through and legitimised its constitutional changes and acted as per the sequence it laid out by holding elections first, the polls open the door for Jammu and Kashmir to become a state again. That would mark yet another win for Indian democracy and constitutionalism, on a day when Indian democracy has shown that it remains robust and voters have shown that they have the ability to spring surprises and keep their leaders accountable.