Assembly elections: Jharkhand swept by Modi wave as BJP and ally set to from govt

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s bid for a majority government in Jharkhand appears likely to be achieved with the help of one pre-poll ally. The halfway mark in the assembly is 41 in an 81-seat assembly, and the BJP and its AJSU ally seemed likely to get at least 42 seats between them. This means the next government will be a coalition led by the BJP, and the need for an additional ally or the crossover of independents may not be necessary for a stable government. At one stage, it seemed that the BJP would require the help of the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik), which is headed by ex-BJP Chief Minister Babulal Marandi. Marandi fell out with the party some year ago after Arjun Munda and other MLAs brought his government down. Since then he has been running his own party, with varied success. [caption id=“attachment_2003191” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The new game in town is to fight separately and cohabit afterwards.[/caption] Given the strong showing of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and Marandi’s JVM (P), and given the Congress-RJD coalition’s wins in some pockets, the new government will have a solid opposition. But there is no need for a shaky coalition of disparate parties and independents. What the Jharkhand results prove is that the Modi wave has helped the BJP to emerge as the strongest party in the state, but the wave was not strong enough to beat back entirely the counter-waves of tribal loyalties and rival coalitions. Just as BJP’s Mission 44 failed in Jammu & Kashmir when the opposition recalibrated its strategy to stop Modi’s surge, the party’s showing in Jharkhand indicates that Narendra Modi will now have to spend time giving his allies due space and also rein in the hotheads in the Sangh parivar from taking the party towards Hindutva, sinking his governance agenda further. The J&K and Jharkhand results are the first indications that the BJP, even though resurgent in most parts, has to recalibrate its strategy of going it alone all the time when the opposition to it is also beginning to see the need to work together. In fact, if the JMM and JVM had fought the elections together, or the JMM and Congress/RJD alliances had entered into seat adjustments, the results could have been quite different. The rival combos would have equalled the BJP’s solo vote share. However, it is also possible that parties fighting separately can garner more votes than when fighting together. The Congress-JMM coalition, by breaking up before the elections, has managed to garner over 30 percent of the popular vote. This has been the pattern in J&K too, where the National Conference and the Congress fought the elections separately to tell the voters different stories in the Kashmir valley and in Jammu. The new game in town is to fight separately and cohabit afterwards.