Chandigarh: Months after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionary Anil Masih was caught rigging the Chandigarh mayoral polls, the saffron party lost the city’s lone parliamentary seat to Congress’s Manish Tewari.
The contest was close but Tewari emerged victorious over BJP’s Sanjay Tandon by a close margin of 2504 votes — Tewari was polled 2,16,657 against Tandon’s 2,14, 153 votes. The poll outcome came as a rude shock for the saffron party, which did not lose this seat since 2014.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Multiple factors are responsible for the defeat of the party but one issue that stood out was the infamous mayoral polls in January this year, which became national embarrassment for the city residents.
The Supreme Court had to intervene to declare the AAP’s candidate as the validly elected mayor after Masih was caught on camera invalidating votes and declaring the BJP candidate as the winner.
During the campaign, Manish Tewari made sure that the issue remained alive in voters’ memory. Using words like ‘murderer’ of democracy, Tewari openly claimed that voting for Tandon was like voting for Masih. He carried a copy of the Constitution during his nomination as well as public meetings, calling it his commitment towards preserving the Constitution of the nation.
8% vote swing
In 2019 general elections, the Congress party’s vote share was behind the BJP’s by 10% in Chandigarh. This time, Tewari’s spirited campaign increased the grand old party’s vote share by 8% from 40% in 2019 to 48% in 2024.
On the contrary, the BJP’s vote share came down from 50% in 2019 to 47.6% this year. Apart from the Masih factor that went against the BJP, poll pundits believed that there was a transfer of the INDIA partner AAP’s votes to the Congress nominee, thereby helping him win.
Since 2022 civic body polls, AAP has made considerable inroads in Chandigarh especially in slum rehabilitated colonies, which created a dent in the BJP votes.
BJP candidate Tandon had claimed that the AAP votes would never switch over to the Congress party, which proved otherwise as the final results showed.
Modi factor not enough
The popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had helped the BJP win the Chandigarh seat in two consecutive general elections.
This year’s outcome makes it clear that the Modi factor was not enough for Tandon. Moreover, the credit also goes to Congress’s smart campaign focusing on BJP’s non-performance in Chandigarh in the past 10 years. There has been severe anti-incumbency against the BJP in the city since residents were miffed that BJP MP Kirron Kher — who was representing the constituency in Lok Sabha since 2014 — was inaccessible and had hardly worked to resolve their long pending issues.
The BJP replaced Kher with Tandon hoping that it will bypass anti-incumbency but the Chandigarh verdict shows that this strategy does not always work.
As there was a drop in BJP’s vote share by almost 3% from last election, several experts are also pointing fingers at factionalism within the BJP.
There was factionalism within the Congress too since senior leader Pawan Bansal was unhappy over denial of ticket. But Tewari could overcome the challenge, whereas Tandon failed to take everyone along.
