It’s an oft repeated theory that the road to Delhi lies through Uttar Pradesh that sends 80 MPs to parliament and all eyes are on the assembly elections in the first quarter of 2022. But after UP, the states that send the largest numbers of MPs to Parliament are Maharashtra that has 48 Lok Sabha seats and West Bengal that has 42. In the 2019 national election, beyond a near sweep of Uttar Pradesh, the BJP had won 23 seats from Maharashtra in an alliance with the Shiv Sena (that got 18) while the party also pulled a surprise when it won 18 seats in West Bengal. 

Total up the Maharashtra and Bengal seats and the BJP got 41 of its 303 seats from these two states. If we go by the results of the By-polls, the BJP has been near wiped put, with party candidates losing their deposits in three of the four assembly seats, for which elections took place in Bengal. This implies that the BJP’s strategy of trying to create a party structure in Bengal by engineering defections from the TMC, pitting PM Narendra Modi against CM Mamata Banerjee and playing the Hindutva card in a state with a large minority population have all failed. There is no pro-Modi or pro-Hindutva card that worked in Bengal if we look at the demographics of the four seats that comprehensively defeated the BJP. 

“Didi O Didi” as the PM famously called Mamata Banerjee during the assembly elections in March-April this year, holds complete sway in the state. It is entirely plausible to estimate that in the next general election, the BJP will find it hard to reach anywhere near its 2019 performance in Bengal. For in 2019, the party was an unknown entity that filled the vacuum in the Opposition space, created by the utter collapse of the Left and Congress. Now, it’s a known entity that tried storming the state, used central agencies against its opponents, injected huge amounts of cash into politics, made big political acquisitions from the TMC, and tried introducing Jai Shri Ram and Hindutva into Bengal. And for all the effort it has been comprehensively rejected. The fact that many of the big defectors have gone scurrying back to the TMC also tells its own tale that they do not see much of a future in the BJP. 

The picture is Maharashtra is more complex but not looking good for the BJP ever since the Shiv Sena dumped its long-standing alliance partner and formed a government with the help of the NCP and Congress. Every effort has been made to dislodge that government and discredit it and we have seen a clash of central and state agencies in the political arena of the state. But somehow, the Shiv Sena’s CM Uddhav Thackeray has emerged a figure in his own right and has navigated the state through the terrible era of COVID and Lockdowns. He’s earned respect for finding his own feet without the ideological embrace of the BJP. 

The BJP has in the two years since, not been able to match its own performance in local bodies and panchayat elections. It’s not been wiped out as in Bengal but if the Maharashtra alliance remains in power, there are question marks on how many seats the BJP would win on its own in a Lok Sabha outing as it has traditionally allied with the Sena. In the recent by-polls, the Shiv Sena candidate won the Lok Sabha by-poll in Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the first win for the party outside Maharashtra in the union territory. The BJP lost the seat with its vote share declining by seven percent. 

There has indeed been a good show for the BJP and its allies in each of the five assembly seats in Assam but it’s a small state. There is also a comprehensive defeat in the tiny hill state of Himachal Pradesh, one of the nation’s most literate states where the Congress swept each of the three assemblies that voted along with the Lok Sabha seat of Mandi. This will hurt as the BJP is in power in the state and the Himachal result suggests a trend apart from the usual expectation that ruling parties perform better in by-elections. In BJP-ruled Karnataka too, the BJP won one seat but lost another to the Congress in CM Basavaraj Bommai’s home turf. But then let’s remember that the BJP did not actually win a simple majority in Karnataka and is in power after organizing defections from other parties. 

The BJP also won an assembly seat in Telangana, which must be noted after its good performance in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation election in late 2020. Yet we must factor in that the candidate who won was an important figure in the ruling TRS that he left after facing corruption charges. Simultaneously, in Telangana we must take note of the continuing phenomena of the BJP beginning to occupy the opposition space vacated by the Congress. The BJP, in its remarkable expansion in India in the Modi era, systematically occupies the role of opposition in new territories where the traditional player the Congress begins withering. 

But all in all, the by-poll results are not good for the BJP as they also failed to make a mark in faction ridden Congress ruled Rajasthan, although they held the ground in BJP ruled Madhya Pradesh. Their expansion to the east is stalled in Bengal although it proceeds in Assam and the north-east. And even in the Hindi belt from where the BJP wins most of its seats to Parliament, fights are getting tougher and closer by the day. The potential 2024 arithmetic is currently near zero in Bengal and unknown in Maharashtra. The trends also reveal a huge drop in vote share for the BJP. In such a situation to start a losing trend in even tiny states like Himachal Pradesh is cause for great concern for a party that prioritizes winning elections over everything else.