Aditi Tandon
New Delhi, January 1
At the dawn of 2023, a politically crucial year that would set the tone for the 18th General Election in 2024, the ruling BJP would be seeking to retain its electoral base and expand further South into Telangana while the Congress would be eyeing revival and broader Opposition unity.
Sena’s Sanjay Raut backs Rahul gandhi as PM candidate
New Delhi: Close on the heel of Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United ) leader Nitish Kumar stating that he was ready to accept Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as the candidate for Prime Minister’s post for the 2024 General Election, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut also expressed similar sentiments on Sunday. Raut showered praises on Rahul and the his Bharat Jodo Yatra in his weekly column “Rokthok” in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece “Saamana”. TNS
Powered by emphatic and some record wins in five (Gujarat, UP, Manipur, Goa, Uttarakhand) of the seven state elections held in 2022, the BJP has set newer targets for 2023 when nine states — Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland and Mizoram in the Northeast; BJP’s sole South Indian bastion Karnataka; India’s youngest state Telangana and Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and MP — will go to the polls, in what would be a semifinal to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP, currently in power in Karnataka, MP and Tripura and a junior partner in the government in Nagaland and Meghalaya, has begun strategising not just to sustain its voter base in these states, but to challenge the ruling BRS in Telangana and to wrest Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress.
Course corrections needed in Karnataka have begun with Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday giving the nod to state Cabinet expansion to accommodate leaders who can impact poll results. Shah also declared that the BJP would go it alone, ruling out any truck with the JDS which he bracketed with the Congress.
Telangana remains high on BJP’s radar with PM Narendra Modi personally leading from the front and claiming way back in November 2022 that “the lotus will bloom in every corner of the state.” Addressing anti-incumbency in Karnataka, MP and Tripura and finding viable new partners in Meghalaya (where the BJP is growing distant from senior ruling partner NPP) and Nagaland would remain BJP’s top challenges.
For the Congress 2023, would be a make or break year. Not only would it be a test of Rahul Gandhi and his mammoth people’s outreach-cum-personal rebranding exercise Bharat Jodo yatra, but would also reveal if the crowds mobilised during the yatra convert into votes, placing the Congress at the head of the Opposition table, with several leaders harbouring prime ministerial ambitions.
Having won only in Himachal Pradesh in 2022, the Congress realises it can hardly sit on the lone laurel. The party faces the uphill task of fighting BJP’s “man-to-man marking” brand of electioneering, if it has to cash in on anti-incumbency in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh — the two states it most certainly must win to stay afloat for the next LS polls.
The year will also determine if the illusion of Opposition unity — as reflected deeply in the 2022 Presidential and Vice Presidential elections which the BJP-led NDA candidates handsomely won — will end or expand and whether a long anticipated anti-BJP front will actually take shape to challenge PM Modi and the BJP.