India’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looks set to win the next national elections, due a little over two years from now in 2024. Or so the results of a recent round of provincial polls—in which the party maintained its political and ideological grip over a large swathe of the country, and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, maintained his preeminence—suggest. Especially, as they included one in India’s largest province, Uttar Pradesh, where it made history by being the first political party in 35 years to win twice in a row.   

But, while the results certainly demonstrated the continuing appeal of the party’s powerful Hindu template, and the power of Mr Modi’s strongman image, some opposition parties threw up a surprise—and, with it, the possibility of redemption. The less-than-a-decade-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won a landslide victory in the northern province of Punjab; and the conglomeration of three smaller parties, the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD),  proved that it had the capacity to challenge the BJP juggernaut in its strongest bastion, Uttar Pradesh—if it continued to work on its strengths.   

The results  

The BJP did not just win Uttar Pradesh, it also managed to retain three smaller states, Goa in the west, Uttarakhand in the north, and Manipur in the northeast—an indication of the geographical spread of its fiefdom. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP’s majoritarian politics has not just taken strong root, but it stood out as the one that promised a strong and stable government. In the smaller states, it was more about the gradual dissipation of the grand old party, the Indian National Congress (INC)—which ruled India for more than half-a-century and once looked invincible—and the BJP’s will to win at all cost.  

In Punjab, the AAP swept the entire ruling establishment—those in government and those in opposition alike—out with its evocatively chosen party symbol, a broom. The vote here reflected not just the people’s disenchantment with the country’s two oldest parties, the 137-year-old Congress and the 102-year-old Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), both seen as venal and self-serving. It also demonstrated a desire for the populist, seemingly “non-political”, apparently ideology-neutral but, in fact, BJP-lite AAP that has built its reputation on bread-and-butter issues in Delhi, where it has been in power since 2015.  

For the Opposition, once the euphoria among BJP supporters had died down, the other piece of good news came from Uttar Pradesh: the BJP had returned to power, but not before the SP-RLD-led combine, that had been virtually comatose till last October, succeeded in giving it some sleepless nights. The combine doubled its bench strength, and increased its vote share by more than 12 percent.  

Muslims, who had been at the receiving end of the BJP’s polarising rhetoric and communal administration, played a significant role in this increase. Not just that, 34 Muslim candidates won their elections, an increase from the 24 in 2017. This time, 21 of these newly-elected Muslim Members of the Legislative Assembly were from the western part of the province, the site of communal violence in 2013 that saw as many as 50,000 Muslims fleeing their villages. The significance of this result lies in the fact that the BJP was not able entirely to consolidate the Hindu vote in favour of its candidates this time, as it had done in 2017.  

On the other hand, these elections announced the virtual collapse of the INC. It had not been expected to make much of a mark in Uttar Pradesh but, ahead of the polls, it was held to have a reasonable chance of winning the picturesque province of Goa in the west as well as in the hill state of Uttarakhand; it was even held to be in the fight in the northeastern state of Manipur. But the voters gave a clear verdict in favour of the BJP in all these three states as well. 

Can the BJP be challenged?  

The AAP’s victory in Punjab now places its leader Arvind Kejriwal—as an inspirational figure—on the political centre stage: with its most recent victory, the AAP controls two states– and this is a distinction that no other regional party shares. Indeed, its leaders are already speaking of the AAP as the alternative to the Congress and it sees itself emerging eventually as the real challenge to the BJP. Of course, the AAP is a long way from achieving this, but it has demonstrated that it has the determination to grow.  

Till now, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Bannerjee, who has recorded three straight wins and stopped the BJP in its tracks in last year’s assembly polls in the state, was being viewed as a possible face for the Opposition. Now she has competition. And if she had taken the lead in galvanising the Opposition, two other chief ministers from the south, Tamil Nadu’s MK Stalin, and Telangana’s K Chandrashekhar Rao, have also been extremely vocal on the subject in recent months. And in Uttar Pradesh, the SP-led combine could add muscle to an Opposition grouping that is already being created ahead of 2024—if it can maintain its momentum on its recent victories, it would translate into over 20  parliamentary seats.  

But even though the BJP’s majoritarian rhetoric has had little success in the southern half of the country, barring Karnataka, and limited gains in Odisha and West Bengal, the opposition’s stalwarts are still battling over the leadership issue. Shockingly enough, the AAP’s victory saw very few Opposition leaders even congratulating the party for its historic win.  

Simultaneously, Ms Bannerjee announced barely three months ago the demise of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), a Congress-led coalition that had led governments at the Centre between 2004 and 2014, and then went to poach several top Congress leaders.  However, the chief ministers of Telangana and Maharashtra have made it clear since then that there can be no Opposition without the INC. 

With this round of elections seeing the INC slumping even further, it is becoming increasingly apparent that it cannot be depended on to be the fulcrum on which an Opposition can be mounted against the BJP. With its falling graph, its failed leadership and its inability to forge a counter-narrative to that of the BJP, it can, at best, play a supporting role even though it still remains the largest opposition party. Indeed, it still has the second largest number of Members of Parliament, as well as Members of Legislative Assemblies in the states; it rules Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, and is a junior partner in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Other than the BJP—and now AAP—no other party is in power in more than one state.  

But the INC cannot be the face of the Opposition, if it is to take on the BJP behemoth.  

Clearly, if the Opposition is to move ahead, it should postpone the question of leadership—there have been growing calls for the Nehru-Gandhi family to step aside and hand over the reins to other leaders—and instead, focus on forging a credible and convincing counter-narrative to that of the BJP, as well as an alternate governance model. That is where it should begin. Else, they will be handing a walkover to the BJP in 2024.