Victories apart, Cong fails to improve vote share

JAIPUR: Three consecutive victories — assembly, Lok Sabha and now the municipal polls — hardly helped Congress to increase its poll percentage in the state. Records suggest that a decline in the vote share of the BJP has not seen a concommitant increase in the vote share of the Congress. On the other hand, the vote share of non-Congress and non-BJP parties, and of Independents, which had gone up steadily in the past few rounds of assembly elections, saw a significant increase this time.
In the last year’s Vidhan Sabha elections, the voter turnout at 66.44% was only marginally lower than the 67.2% in 2003.The vote share of the Congress rose only marginally to 36% this time from 35.6% last time, while that of the BJP declined to 34% from 39.2% in 2003. In stark contrast, “others” recorded a 28% vote share as against 25.2% in 2003, giving credence to the theory that the votes the BJP lost did not go to the Congress.
In 1998, the Congress won 153 seats with a vote share of 44.95% and the BJP won 33 seats with a vote share of 33%. ‘Others’ had a vote share of 23%. Interestingly, in the 1993 elections too, the vote share of ‘others’ was 23%, and that of the BJP and the Congress was 38.6% and 38.27% respectively. The Congress lost those elections but, ironically, its vote share then was higher than that of this time. If this trend continues, it is possible for a third front or parties or individuals representing a third force to make an impact in the state in the not-too-distant future. Fourteen Independents won this time, most of them Congress and BJP rebels. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) won three seats, all entirely on its own, and the BSP increased its presence in the state by winning six seats.
It was a fiercely contested election, focussed more on issues rather than caste and community calculations. This is not to say that political parties did not use identity politics, but when they did, the voter, irrespective of the candidate’s caste, consciously voted against those who did not live up to their expectations.
Six months after the Vidhan Sabha poll, the BJP is a totally lost outfit with a badly wrecked organisational structure and if one could remember the party looked as poorly placed as the Congress was in the 2004 Lok Sabha poll. In 2004, the BJP polled 49.01% votes and won 21 out of the 25 seats,while the Congress with just 41.43% of votes in its favour could win only four seats.
But the great decline was to follow. The BJP in the Vidhan Sabha poll could muster only 34.31% votes, yet it could manage to win 78 seats. But in Lok Sabha elections, even with an increase in its polled votes (36.57%) in comparison to the Vidhan Sabha poll, it could manage only four Lok Sabha seats.
The recent elections for local bodies saw that the BJP lost its urban voters tremendously as it finished a distant second with its nominees losing to the Congress candidates in 46 local bodies for which the elections were held. In the elections for the post of Mayor and chairpersons, the Congress, which in the 1999 municipal poll, could win only 17 as against BJP’s 25. The Congress snowballed its figure to 29 while the BJP won only 10 seats.
The Congress, as compared to the 2004 municipal polls, when it won only 15 seats as compared to the BJP’s 31, improved its performance leaps and bounds to win 29 seats — a figure that was higher than 17 seats won by the BJP and others. Surely, while the Congress worked hard to improve its performance, the BJP not only lost its committed voters, but also lost the number of elected representatives. All this shows that the BJP lost its electorates tremendously.