Assembly Elections-2022 Results: BJP Set To Win The Semi-Finals 4-1, A Decimated Congress Confirmed As The Cause Of Split Opposition!

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has created history in the volatile state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), interspersed with President’s Rule on many an occasion over the past decades, by overriding the anti-incumbency factor that has been in operation in the last 25 years to retain power, and Yogi Adityanath is set to become the first ever Chief Minister of UP to have two consecutive terms. Although the election battle in the state had been fought with open polarization tactics with the Hindutva campaign in full flow the victory with a comfortable majority is still an unprecedented achievement in light of the hurdles of the last two years—the woes of the migrant workers in the COVID-19 pandemic first wave; the abysmal management in the COVID-19 second wave with the rain of deaths and bodies floating the river Ganga; the farmers’ agitation and violence; the uncontrollably high unemployment rate; and the palpable anger of the citizens felt on almost every locality of the state.

 

As per the latest figures the BJP is heading for around 270 seats out of a total of 403 even as the counting for the assembly elections in 5 Indian states continue, although not able to accomplish the 300+ seats target this time as achieved in the last elections. Now the BJP has two paramount winners—PM Modi and Yogi—and the future is surely going to hang on the performances and the magnetism of these leaders. It is believed that the results of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections always have a direct impact on the outcome of the General Elections thanks to its 80 Lok Sabha (lower house of the Indian Parliament) seats as the largest state of India. Therefore, as per that belief the ruling BJP seems set to perform a hat-trick in the 2024 General Elections.

 

The other major highlight of the Assembly Elections-2022 results is the landslide victory for the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) winning an overwhelming 92 seats out of 117 seats in the Punjab assembly elections as per the latest reports. This is like a dream-come-true for the Delhi CM Kejriwal who has been trying extremely hard to build a national presence of his party AAP, and now he has been able to extend it beyond Delhi, to an important state of Punjab. He had announced Bhagwant Singh Mann, AAP’s sitting Lok Sabha MP as the CM-face well before the polls, and the popular actor-comedian has won hands down with a victory margin of over 58000 votes.

 

The people of Punjab, bearing the brunt of the farmers’ agitation and the consequent wrath of the central government, were left clueless by the classic personal feud between the two Congress Sardars—the erstwhile CM Capt. Amrinder Singh and the cricketer-comedian-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu and the spineless conduct of their regional parties—and have wholeheartedly welcomed the populist model of Kejriwal already tried successfully in Delhi despite the ruling BJP breathing heavily over his shoulders. The captain, dismayed at the betrayal by the Congress high command, formed a new party and fought the elections in alliance with the BJP; but he failed miserably to create an impact. Both Amrinder and Sidhu lost their seats among many other stalwarts, such is the sweeping wave for change.

 

The BJP has eliminated the Congress in the states of Uttarakhand and Manipur retaining power clear majority apart from Uttar Pradesh; in Manipur the BJP is going to form the government on its own for the first time. The situation in Goa is still tricky even though BJP seems to inching its way to a simple majority. In light of its previous stunt of grabbing power despite Congress being the single largest party in 2017, it is almost certain that BJP would retain power again having 20 seats out of 40 already. The results are so far based on leads/trends; nevertheless, the leads seem to be conclusive as victory marches in various cities hit the streets.

 

The BJP thinktank’s much-touted slogan of a ‘Congress mukt Bharat’ (Congress-free India) comes as a political masterstroke at this juncture. The thinktank knew very well that Congress being the oldest and the longest-ruling political party of India no united opposition can be viable without its inclusion. And in every election the party has been decimated and demoralized to such an extent that it has now become a clear liability for any aspiring opposition to stop the BJP, the Maharashtra model being the only exception. The dynastic pattern of the Congress has also been targeted repeatedly with a clear objective. Slowly over time, dissidence and defections grew within Congress with many of its promising leaders leaving the party and all other opposition parties became wary of the fact that once an alliance is formed with Congress, the latter’s dynastic leaders would have to made CM or PM faces which the ambitious regional leaders like Mamata Banerjee and Kejriwal cannot ever agree to. Add to that the BJP’s tireless wooing of the regional parties in various states.  

 

So, we’ve seen split oppositions in all the five states that made the BJP retain power in 4 and the AAP in 1 state. This way, the road is very clear indeed to another landslide by BJP in the General Elections-2024. By continuously decimating the Congress the BJP seems to have succeeded in eliminating a united opposition in the largest democracy of the world. Unfortunately, the process thus unfolded has sort of legitimatized the use of polarization and mixing religion with politics, the increasing loss of the true values of secularism, growing assaults on the democratic institutions and constitutional authority, and the spewing of venom and hatred between communities all over the country that is set to go on infecting us nobody knows for how long.

 

A few Congress spokespersons have no other option but to admit in television interviews that their party’s antics in Punjab just four-five months before the elections were extremely uncalled for. The party High Command has, for reasons unknown, totally yielded to the comedian’s never-ending demands making him party president, ousting a performing CM Captain Amrinder Singh, installing the comedian’s protégé as the new CM Charanjit Singh Channi who incidentally has lost both the seats he contested as per the latest reports and giving the comedian all the power as he feels like in running the government or the election campaign. Other dissident but very experienced Congress veterans have also said that the Gandhi (read dynastic) leadership has outlived its relevance. It is also a quirk of nature that another actor-comedian has come in to replace the black comedian to make the people of Punjab feel better, hopefully!

The Endless Congress Dilemma Is Advantage BJP And A Constant Bottleneck For United Opposition!

The only political party that is always having the last laughs on the pathetically prolonged Congress dilemma and its manifestations is obviously the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and is greatly advantaged to stage a hat-trick of victory in the 2024 General Elections, even though the biggest national democratic exercise is more than two and half years away. The oldest political party of India, the Indian National Congress (INC or simply Congress), has been suffering consecutive routs in both the General Elections since 2014 and in most of the Assembly Elections in recent times, leading everyone to believe that the only second pan-India party, apart from the BJP since 2014, is caught in the throes of an irreversible decline and fall. It still remains a party bound irrevocably to the Gandhi family, despite the repeated failures of the leadership and internal conflicts led by several veteran Congress leaders called the G-23 demanding a change in leadership and holding organizational elections for more than two years now, after the debacle of the 2019 General Elections. The Congress High Command, instead of listening to their own stalwarts and discussing openly the issues, has been following a confrontational line thanks perhaps to the grand advice offered by the old guards, always supporting the Gandhi leadership in a mental framework akin almost to sycophancy and slavery.

 

The resignation of the then Congress President Rahul Gandhi after the rout in 2019 and his steadfast refusal to hold the post again, the growth of the G-23, the growing dissidence all across the country, the mess the party created in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh losing power after coming back to electoral victories, the continuing drama in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and the pending meet of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) failed, as always, to convince the ‘high command’ about the urgent need for structural changes and democratic reforms within the party. Instead, the loyal old guards pitifully prayed to Rahul Gandhi to reconsider and failing to do so requested the erstwhile President Sonia Gandhi to be the interim president to which she obliged. Thanks to a caustic remark by one of the most prominent Congress veterans of the G-23, Kapil Sibal, that he was not aware about who had been the taking the party decisions as there was no permanent leadership, the ‘high command’ finally called for a CWC meeting recently.

 

But alas, no crucial decisions were taken in the meeting about making the Congress united and strong. What had been seen and heard was that Sonia Gandhi confirmed herself as a full-time president and that a new president would be elected after she complete her term which is almost one year away and during which the crucial assembly elections of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab are to take place. Lady Gandhi further accentuated the divide by telling the 23 leaders of the differently-opinionated group to approach her directly for discussions and not through the media, failing miserably to understand why at all the G-23 was forced to go to the media. The old guards again pleaded with Rahul Gandhi to resume next year to which Rahul assured of reconsideration. Of course, the CWC promised party elections and a new president during August-September, 2022. The two leaders of the G-23 who were present in the meeting, unfortunately, lacked the courage to make bold demands which raises questions about the potent political impact of the group. The party gleefully delighted about the proceedings is again the BJP, because as long as Congress remains dynastic and weak it’s their furtherance of the ambition to capture the whole of India by 2024.

 

As is now obvious, the biggest setback that looms due to the prolonged dilemma of the Congress is for the prospect of forming a national united opposition front—as an effective force to counter the BJP expansion—notwithstanding the ardent efforts of Mamata Bannerjee who defeated the BJP loud and clear in her state of West Bengal. While the Congress high command always supported Mamata’s efforts the Congress state party in West Bengal did everything for a division of votes by forming an alliance with the Communist Party-Marxist (CPM) that directly favored the BJP plunge in the state in the West Bengal Assembly Elections-2021; it is only due to the mature decision of the voters who never wanted a communal party to come to power in their secular state that helped Mamata achieving a landslide, and of course, the electoral-strategy wizard Prashant Kishore who joined Mamata’s Trinamool (grass-root) Congress (TMC) was a great help in terms of strategy and planning. Ironically, the same Prashant Kishore who expressed his willingness to join the Congress to help them lead a united opposition has still not been realized.

 

This puts all the political opposition parties of the country in a dilemma too: they realize that any united front cannot be formalized without the participation of oldest political party and its pan-India status; but as has been proved in Bihar where the promising young leader Tejashwi Yadav lost by an agonizing margin to BJP in the Bihar Assembly Elections-2020 due mainly to the non-performance of his prime ally Congress and in Assam where the Congress failed to work out an understanding with the emerging regional parties and instead joined forces with another communal party thus effectively creating a division of votes which clearly favored a worried BJP retain power in the Assam Assembly Elections-2021; barring Maharashtra where Congress is still sticking successfully to the opposition coalition government in spite of the some stray contrary comments made by its leaders now and then, in most of the other states the party has been viewed as a liability for any opposition alliance.

 

The case of the state of Punjab which is always considered the unassailable stronghold of the Congress party comes as the latest case in support of the party being called a liability and mostly, inadvertently or otherwise, favoring the BJP in expanding their roots. The Punjab crisis led to the ousting of the strong Chief Minister and Congress veteran Captain Amarinder Singh who now is reported to be moving toward joining the BJP, like numerous other promising Congress leaders leaving or planning to leave the party over the past two years. The Congress high command, mainly Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, sided with a comically inconsistent Navjot Singh Sidhu who, even after fulfilling his target of assuming the state Congress chief post and having a change of chief minister and government, recently resigned from the post and a few days later did an about-turn rejoining his post, supposedly after his talks with the Congress ‘high command’, and in an immaculate dynastic hold the party is projecting Priyanka Gandhi as the new Chief Ministerial face for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early next year. Punjab too will go for assembly elections during the same time and the present Congress-created crisis favors the BJP strongly to consider make a tremendous fight to gain power for the first time.

 

Nobody can guess with conviction how and when this Congress dilemma is going to end or end the party itself from the Indian election scenario. For any tangible action by Congress one will have to wait for another year. In this perspective the role of the G-23 is crucial in trying to debate within the party and convince the party for a change that is so much needed to change its tag of an ‘unreliable ally’ in all forthcoming electoral alliances. There have been issues always to counter the ruling power: the disastrous handling of the Second Wave of COVID-19 and the vaccination hassles; the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) movement; the ever-rising fuel prices crossing the 100-rupee mark and still moving ahead; the still unresolved farmers’ agitation and the recent violence in Lakhimpur-Kheri in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh leading to deaths of four farmers; the increasing communal divide and lynching cases; and the alleged bulldozing of democratic norms and values. Rahul Gandhi, of course, makes the right kind of noises, but he vanishes afterward, at times into his unpredictably mysterious sabbaticals; and not allowing the Indian Parliament to function is clearly not an alternative. The oldest political party of India must introspect very intensely indeed and time is running out.  Else, the monopoly of the BJP is set to continue like a juggernaut and in the furtherance of its most loved ambition of having a one-party and much-hyped Congress-free democracy in India.

The Ephemeral Sardar!

He was fairly loved as a cricketer, a right-hand batsman and a part-time medium pace bowler, graduating from the tag of a ‘stroke-less wonder’ during his poor debut to ‘Sixer Sidhu’ in later years; he was the most loved as a commentator and television comedian for his famous one-liners and extempore humorous verses and eulogies; and what he has been as a politician we’ll come back to later on. Yes, we’re indeed talking about the gloriously or infamously unpredictable, the compulsively impulsive, the mysteriously ‘principled’, the all-occasion fun-orator, the allegedly inefficient team-builder and the powerhouse of passion, Navjot Singh Sidhu who in fact managed to display all of the emotions in easy abandon like the colors of a rainbow. He has been a Sardar (of the Sikh religion) with an uncanny difference and his continual fight with another Sardar (Captain Amarinder Singh, the former Chief Minister of Punjab) is one of the Indian political classics.

 

Thanks to his good performances in the domestic circuit of Indian cricket Navjot Singh Sidhu was selected for the national Test team in 1983-84; but his debut was very poor which earned him the tag of a ‘stroke-less wonder’ from a journalist, and was dropped from the team. The Sardar, as usual, showed his emotions, and later claimed in an interview that the tag had entirely changed his cricketing life. Navjot was later recalled to the one-day international (ODI) team and he performed very well in the ICC World Cup-1987, creating a world record of scoring four consecutive half-centuries on debut. He was marked out as a great hitter of sixes, particularly off the spinners, which changed his tag to ‘Sixer Sidhu’. He also earned praise from many international cricket commentators and experts. His cricket career began; however, a career that lasted till 1999 was not without upsets and turmoil thanks to the Sardar’s emotions.

 

He was recalled to the Test team in 1988 and had relatively successful outings in the New Zealand tour of India, the Indian tour of the West Indies and India’s tour of Pakistan. He was dropped again in 1992 for his poor run with the bat in India’s tours of England and Australia. Navjot was recalled to Team India later that season and the best part of his cricketing career lasted till 1996 when he walked out of a Test Series against England in England complaining of a difference of opinion with the then India Captain Mohammed Azharuddin. The BCCI banned him for the next ten Tests as a punitive measure. This episode somewhat confirmed his inability to get on with a team or in team-building. Sidhu made his way back to Team India in the 1996-97 tour of the West Indies where his only double century earned the unique distinction of being one of the slowest innings in the history of world cricket. After a poor performance in India’s New Zealand tour of 1998-99 Sidhu was dropped again for the upcoming tour of Pakistan, and the Sardar announced his retirement from all forms of cricket in 1999. In all, he played 51 Tests with 9 tons including a double ton and 136 ODIs.

 

In the meanwhile, the tempestuous Sardar was involved in a road-rage incident in December 1988 when he hit a senior citizen on the head who later died in the hospital. This homicide case dragged on till 1999 when a trial court acquitted him of murder charges; but in 2006 the Punjab High Court reversed the order convicting him and his associate guilty of culpable homicide. Sidhu and the associate appealed in the Supreme Court, and the Apex Court stayed the order in 2007. Finally Navjot Singh Sidhu was acquitted of culpable homicide in 2018 by the Supreme Court, but the court still convicted him of ‘causing a hurt’, and fined him without, fortunately, ordering a jail term.

After retiring from an eventful cricket career Sidhu became a cricket commentator, a television personality and a politician in the span of the next 4-5 years. His cricket commentator career was cut short abruptly as he got fired by the sports channel for swearing live on air, although his one-liners on air made him an extremely popular commentator. Navjot, however, continued as a cricket expert in various new channels and renewed his contract with the same sports channel in 2012, but due to contractual dispute it ended in 2014 during the IPL. In the region of television he started appearing as a judge in the Great Indian Laughter Challenge (2005-2008) and also acted in various television programs. He had been a permanent guest in the most popular shows of Comedy Nights With Kapil (2013-16) and The Kapil Sharma Show (2016-2019). He was ousted from the latter show due to his alleged pro-Pakistan remarks on the show and his closeness in to the new Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan who was once the most loved fast bowler in international cricket and other Pak army dignitaries that created a national outrage.

 

The political career of Navjot Singh Sidhu also began in 2004 when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and won the General Elections of 2004 from Amritsar, his favorite constituency. But he had to resign from the Member of Parliament (MP) position due to the reversal of his homicide case. However, Sidhu fought again in a by-election immediately after the Supreme Court stay and won. In the General Elections of 2009 Sidhu won again on the BJP ticket. In 2014 General Elections he refused to fight as he was not given the ticket from Amritsar. To keep him in the party the BJP nominated Sidhu as a Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Parliament) member. The unpredictable Sardar took the oath in April 2016 and resigned in July the same year. After attempting to form his own political party Sidhu joined the Indian National Congress party in January 2017. He was given the Amritsar constituency in the Punjab Assembly Elections of 2017 which he won with thundering majority and became the Tourism Minister in the cabinet formed by Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh.

 

It is hardly possible for the ephemeral Sardar to stay put in a particular position. Losing his television job, hurt by the Captain’s direct opposition to his Pakistan links and the snub by the Election Commission in the campaign for the General Elections 2019 Sidhu started his lasting fight with the Chief Minister and resigned from cabinet, addressing his resignation letter to the Congress high command. The seemingly dormant volcano in Sidhu erupted and he started attacking the Captain’s government openly. Finally, the Congress high command, considering his popularity in various sections of the state and the forthcoming elections, had to bow down to his wishes, and Sidhu was appointed the Congress president of the state on 18^th July 2021. Now in power, he began to garner support from the Congress MLAs (Members of Legislative Assembly) for himself. The happenings hurt the 79-year-old Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh so much that he tendered his resignation on 20^th September 2021 putting the state in a crisis just four months ahead of Assembly elections-2022.

 

Under Sidhu’s supervision a new Chief Minister was appointed by the Congress high command who was a Dalit which happened for the first time in the state, and two Deputy CMs. The unpredictable Sardar seemed to be happy as he was seen around the new CM. But all hell broke loose when Sidhu resigned from his Congress president post on 28^th September 2021 placing the Congress high command in an unprecedented dilemma. Sidhu reportedly was not happy with the two Deputy Chief Ministers and that a few of the new ministers were not his choices. He said that he is fighting for the state’s future and there could be no compromise with that having also said that he would continue to serve Congress. Protesting voices against Sidhu were heard within the Punjab Congress as they could not accept someone opposing a government led by a Dalit for the first time.

 

Hurt and saddened, the former CM Captain Amarinder Singh met the India Home Minister Amit Shah and said to media that he would leave Congress definitely, but would not join the BJP. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Arving Kejriwal also did not reveal his cards about the likelihood of Navjot Singh Sidhu joining his party. And as is usual, nobody can predict the next moves of the unpredictable Sardar. As per latest reports Sidhu today met the new Chief Minister Channi with the latter announcing that all issues were resolved. It has to be seen how this crisis is going to conclude, if at all, with four months left for the elections. At the moment the Congress party that has always won assembly elections in Punjab is at a total loss, and the BJP that has never won there is at an advantage to stage a maiden victory.