2023 Assembly elections: Year of surprise wins and decisive verdicts

Ahead of the crucial Lok Sabha elections next year, the BJP juggernaut continued to roll in the country with the party winning assembly elections in three Hindi heartland states as five states went to polls in what was touted as the semifinals in the fag end of the year.

The year gone by also brought to the fore what many term as a north-south divide with southern states like Karnataka and Telangana giving a clear mandate to the Congress which ended up losing two states in the north in the form of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. While the Rajasthan verdict was on expected lines as the desert state went with the trend of changing the regime every five years, the Chhattisgarh mandate came as a shocker for the Congress as the party led by Bhupesh Baghel was looking at a comfortable win.

Decisive verdicts

Interestingly, all the states that went to the assembly elections in 2023 delivered a decisive mandate, leaving out all the possibilities of post-poll alliances and horse-trading.

Madhya Pradesh gave the most convincing verdict to the BJP with the party winning 164 out of 230 assembly constituencies even though there were reports of a massive anti-incumbency and voter fatigue after its almost 20-year rule in the state. The BJP had not even projected a chief ministerial face despite Shivraj Singh Chouhan at the helm for 18 years. The ruling party instead opted to fight the elections projecting the face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The BJP adopted the same strategy in Rajasthan to overcome factional feuds, leading to the party’s triumph in 115 out of 200 assembly segments. The BJP secured a comfortable majority in Chhattisgarh too with the party bagging 54 out of 90 assembly seats.

On the other hand, the Congress too won both the southern states – Karnataka and Telangana – decisively, defeating the incumbent BJP and BRS, respectively. The Congress won 135 out of 224 assembly constituencies in Karnataka, wresting the only BJP bastion in the south. Subsequently, the Congress threw BRS led by K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) out of power in Telangana, winning 64 out of 119 seats.

Talking about the northeastern states, the NDPP-BJP alliance secured a clear majority, winning 37 out of 60 assembly seats. In Tripura, the BJP retained power by bagging 32 out of 60 assembly segments.

BJP out of South

Though the BJP pulled out all stops to ensure that it retains its only bastion in the south, it ended up losing the Karnataka assembly elections to the Congress in May 2023.

Buoyed by the success of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra and the people’s overwhelming response to its poll guarantees, the Congress handed a major jolt to the BJP by winning 135 out of 224 assembly seats in the southern state. Political observers attributed the BJP’s humiliating defeat in Karnataka to a lack of strong leadership and the sidelining of party strongman and influential Lingayat leader BS Yeddyurappa. They opined that the party banked heavily on the personal appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to overcome anti-incumbency. The party could only manage to secure 65 assembly seats as compared to its tally of 104 in 2018 when it emerged as the single largest party in the state.

A section of BJP leaders believed that the Congress’ pre-poll guarantees like free power, rice, and unemployment doles found traction among the electorate, while others blamed the party move of giving tickets to 75 new faces, some of them “tainted”, to combat anti-incumbency.

A convincing triumph in Karnataka assembly polls enthused Congress workers in Telangana and the party ran a strong campaign bolstered by its leaders from different parts of the country. Consequently, the Congress secured a decisive verdict in Telangana crushing the BRS that had been ruling the country’s youngest state ever since its inception.

Congress out of Hindi heartland

If the BJP lost Karnataka to the Congress in the south, the Congress ended up losing not one but two states to the BJP in the Hindi heartland – Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

The Congress led by former Chief Minister Kamal Nath faced ignominious defeat at the hands of the BJP as the party managed to win only 65 out of 230 assembly seats. This despite the fact that the BJP was under intense pressure in view of the anti-incumbency and voter fatigue. The party had also fielded three Union ministers and BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayavargiya in the assembly polls. However, the Congress miserably failed to turn the tide in its favour even though the party announced a slew of poll guarantees and Nath also resorted to soft Hindutva to woo the electorate.

Rajasthan seems to have followed the over three-decade old trend of rotating governments and the Congress government led by Ashok Gehlot has been replaced with the BJP dispensation. However, the BJP’s convincing victory came as a surprise as the party was grappling with internal feuds and leadership issues. Chhattisgarh verdict came as a jolt to the Congress leadership as most of the exit polls were giving an edge to the party. However, the BJP proved the poll pundits wrong by securing a comfortable majority to bring an end to the five-year rule of Congress’ Bhupesh Baghel.

Rift in INDIA bloc to fore

The assembly elections in various states in 2023 also brought to the fore the differences among the INDIA bloc partners like the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP).

Led by former Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav, the SP wanted to have a pre-poll alliance with the Congress in Madhya Pradesh. However, it didn’t materialise, as Congress reportedly failed to convince its state leaders for the alliance. Subsequently, Yadav accused the Congress of betraying them.

“If the Congress didn’t want to give seats (in MP), then they should have said it before. Today, the SP is fighting only on seats where it has its own organisation. Now, after Madhya Pradesh, I know that the INDIA alliance is for the (parliamentary) elections on a national level,” Yadav said. “If the Congress continues to behave like this, then who will trust them? If we fight with confusion in mind against the BJP, then we won't succeed,” he added.

“We talked, we tried our best, our people were not agreeing. Because the question was not how many seats, the question was which seats. We were not able to convince our people on the seats they wanted,” said Congress’ Kamal Nath.

Modi magic works again

In all three Hindi heartland states that the BJP won decisively, the BJP didn’t project a chief ministerial face and saw extensive poll campaigning by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior BJP leaders.

Though some may argue that it has been a standard BJP practice to not name a CM face in states where it doesn’t have a strong leadership, it wasn’t the case at least in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan where the BJP had Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje, respectively. They even had three-time CM Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh.

Moreover, the BJP had fielded Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Faggan Singh Kulaste and Prahlad Patel, apart from general secretary Kailash Vijayavargiya in Madhya Pradesh assembly polls. The party may have projected one of them as the CM face, but it instead chose to run a campaign focusing on ‘Modi ki Guarantee’ (Modi’s Guarantee) with its entire campaign revolving around ‘Brand Modi’.

A host of BJP leaders took to social media platforms to credit PM Modi for the BJP's victory in the three states. Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje said the victory in the state was a result of people's faith in PM Modi's guarantees. “The electoral results in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan today for the BJP are an expression of faith in #ModiKiGuarantee...,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar posted on X.