A National Democratic Alliance (NDA) where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not dominant, backed by a full majority, is tantamount to turning the clock back 26 years to May 15, 1998, when former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee created the first avatar of the NDA and formed a government that held power between 1998 and 2004.
The 2024 Lok Sabha election result, which has left the BJP with less than a majority of seats, will likely lead to changes — not just in terms of how the coalition, if it fructifies in governmental terms, is run, but also in the internal dynamics of the BJP.
Politics of consensus
Externally, the BJP will have to look mostly to two of its largest allies, N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United). Both are said to be shrewd bargainers and, till late on Tuesday evening, have been at the receiving end of offers from the Opposition INDIA bloc as well.
Till now, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has never had to play the conciliatory consensus maker, unlike his predecessor, Vajpayee, who had to keep aside the three core issues of the BJP — the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, the abrogation of Article 370, and the implementation of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC). In a new NDA, the BJP’s heldover agenda of the UCC and simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies may also be put on the backburner. The almost defunct post of NDA convenor may see a revival, if the numbers bear out. More than anything else, Tuesday’s poll outcome may result in a more conciliatory position from the BJP and the Prime Minister.
Political scientist Ashwani Kumar of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) looks at Tuesday’s results as a return to a more centrist political outlook. “Given the rich tradition of centrist politics in India, the BJP is set to enter into the Rajdharma of rainbow coalition, reverting to Atal Behari Vajpayee’s consensual politics of governance [while] reinventing the idea of cooperative federalism. Thus, let’s expect what a legendary political scientist called a ‘consocial’ or power sharing democracy, within the majoritarian polity of India,” he said.
Empowering the old guard
Within the BJP too, there will be changes from the current dynamic. After the Assembly polls in five States immediately preceding the Lok Sabha election, the party’s senior Rajasthan leader Vasundhara Raje and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan were replaced in those States. Mr. Chouhan has now won his Lok Sabha seat with a huge margin running into lakhs, and Rajasthan has seen the Congress make a comeback, snagging 11 seats in a State which had seen all 25 seats go to the BJP in both 2014 and 2019. This makes a case for a return of the old guard of the BJP — which predates 2014 — to some increased authority within the party.
With BJP president J.P. Nadda currently on a extension after his term in the post ended in January, a new party president and a new organisational team will also be put in place before long, and that too will change the way the BJP has been functioning over the last decade or so.
RSS influence
For the larger Sangh parivar, this election saw a narrative that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mothership of the BJP, had not exerted itself quite as much as it did in the past. The reasons for this, insiders say, could be the growth of the BJP and a less consultative approach to the RSS, while at the same time fulfilling the RSS agenda in governance. The repeating of many candidates for a third time saw a backlash from BJP workers and voters. In certain cases, such as Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), there were old grievances between Sangh members and that party, and vote transfer became an issue. This could result in a closer embrace in terms of organisational issues between the RSS and the BJP, in contrast to the last few years when the BJP had forged a more independent path.
For the BJP, therefore, Tuesday’s results illuminate a future path that has echoes of the past, with a mixed cast of characters, some who were present in the old NDA, and some new faces. The BJP will have little time to reflect on many of these changes however, as the party must prepare to face a combative Opposition in the upcoming Assembly polls in Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jharkhand.
