Four states and 82 Lok Sabha seats: Results aside, 2024 will still be an open game
Whichever way assembly poll results swing today (Dec 3), political parties and poll pundits, alike, may want to hold on to their predictions for the 2024 battle
Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana collectively account for 82 Lok Sabha constituencies. However, voting patterns in these states for the Assembly elections do not necessarily reflect the electorate’s preference in the Lok Sabha battle, a fact the Congress realised too and to its peril just five years ago.
In 2018, the Congress had ended the BJP’s 15-year reign in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and also won the mandate in Rajasthan, which has a reputation for voting out incumbent governments every five years. In Telangana too, the K Chandrasekhar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi (then Telangana Rashtra Samithi) had won a brute majority, with the Congress reduced to just 19 MLA and the BJP winning a lone seat.
The 2018 results led many to believe that the Congress was on a renascent path and the BJP, dogged by Rahul Gandhi’s shrill campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi over alleged irregularities in the Rafale deal, among other issues, was losing ground.
However, the 2019 Lok Sabha elections returned the BJP to power at the Centre with its biggest-ever mandate – 303 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. The electoral gains the Congress had made in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan six months earlier were practically flat-lined by the BJP and the jingoistic cacophony it successfully created in the aftermath of the Balakot airstrike in Pakistan.
2024 battle
In each of these three states, the BJP won a landslide in the general elections, bagging all 25 seats of Rajasthan, 28 of Madhya Pradesh’s 29 seats and nine of Chhattisgarh’s 11 constituencies. In Telangana too, though the BRS maintained its pole position by winning nine seats, the BJP made significant gains, winning four of the state’s 17 Lok Sabha seats against three bagged by the Congress and the Asaduddin Owaisi retaining his traditional Hyderabad seat for the AIMIM.
In the final tally, of the 82 Lok Sabha seats spread across these four states, the BJP emerged victorious in 66, while the Congress was reduced to just six seats, falling behind even the BRS that shored up nine seats.
As such, whichever way the assembly poll results swing today (December 3), political parties and poll pundits, alike, may want to hold on to their predictions for the 2024 battle that lies less than four months from now.
