New Delhi: The BJP and its NDA ally on Thursday won two of the four Lok Sabha seats that went for by-elections, while the SP, the BSP and the Congress–backed RLD candidate remained successful in winning UP’s prestigious Kairana Lok Sabha seat and the NCP in Maharashtra’s Bhandara-Gondia Lok Sabha constituency.
What may worry the BJP is that these seats were held by the party and its NDA partner. As such, loss of the two seats to the opposition which has already tested success in Karnataka after it managed to cobble together numbers to form H D Kumaraswami headed JD(S)-Congress combine government, will encourage it to stand in the way of the Narendra Modi-led government’s come back plan in the 2019 parliamentary polls.
However, it looks less likely that the Congress, the SP, the BSP and other regional parties-most of which are facing existential problem after the arrival of the Modi-led government at the Centre and the presence of BJP and its alliance partners’ government in 20 states-will be able to match the drive, energy and the passion of the saffron party and its supporters when it will come to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
But it should not be forgotten about their ability to ruin the BJP’s chances on many parliamentary seats which it won comfortably in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. For the opposition, it is easy to drum beat support on farmers’ problem and joblessness-the twin major challenges confronting the BJP-led NDA government, but they are very seasoned than the saffron party in playing Muslim and other caste cards.
In fact Muslims, who hate the BJP to the hilt, can rally behind any outfit or umbrella group which can defeat the saffron party. In Karana, if Jat, Dalit and Muslim could come united against the BJP to give its candidate Mriganka Singh a sound drubbing, it was because of the fact that the SP, the BSP, the Congress backed RLD candidate Tabassum Hasan.
Nevertheless, victory for the opposition in the just concluded Karnataka assembly elections and in two Lok Sabha seats in bypolls has made it clear that the country would see a spectacle in 2019 where Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP will be on one side and coalition group comprising Congress and regional parties on the other.
