Ashutosh Bhardwaj 
One can call it a Surya-Tilak in Ayodhya. The rejection of temple politics, it’s a telegram from Uttar Pradesh to the Varanasi MP. The state that gifted him the Delhi throne in the last two elections has handed him the worst electoral defeat of his life.
With his party considerably short of majority, the only ethical action left for him is to step down and let the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) choose a new leader. There are seven compelling reasons for him to do so.
First, since he fought the election only in his own name, sought votes only for himself and even his party’s manifesto was titled ‘Modi Ki Guarantee’, he has no moral or political right to head the next government. Ironically, the manifesto mentioned the word ‘Modi’ 67 times, and his party has lost a nearly identical number of seats that it had won in 2019.
Second, many of his Union ministers across several states have lost comprehensively, indicating his panoptic defeat – Smriti Irani, Ajay Mishra Teni, Arjun Munda, Kailash Choudhary, Sanjeev Balyan, Mahendra Nath Pandey, Kaushal Kishore, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, Kapil Moreshwar Patil, R.K. Singh, V. Muraleedharan, L. Murugan, Raosaheb Dadarao Danve, Subhas Sarkar et al. As people lose faith in his ministers, following the principle that a council of ministers sinks and sails together, he should join the ranks of his ousted team.
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Third, when the Congress delayed in declaring its nominee from Amethi, he taunted Rahul Gandhi: “Daro mat (Don’t be scared).” The Congress fielded Kishori Lal at the last moment, a nondescript leader who on Tuesday trounced Smriti Irani by 1,67,196 votes, a margin bigger than he could get in Varanasi.
Four, the Ayodhya slap. The city in whose name he had been mutilating Indian civilisation, the city that became the epicentre of his pernicious politics, the city in which he hurriedly inaugurated an under-construction temple this January in furtherance of his political objectives, rejected him today. Aptly, the word ‘Ayodhya’ means that “which can’t be won”.
Fifth, his victory lap began from UP a decade ago, and today it metaphorically ended on the banks of the sangam that had seen countless corpses buried during the pandemic, deaths that he never acknowledged. The Congress has wrested the Allahabad seat after four decades, with the BJP losing by 58,795 votes. His tally of 71 seats from the state in 2014 and 62 in 2019 has come crashing down to 33 this year. As he falls short of majority by some 30 seats, the telegram from UP must not be ignored.
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Six, the Manipur punch. As the Congress wins both seats in the state by a handsome margin of nearly one lakh, he can’t ignore the reply by a people whose land he had allowed to smoulder.
Seven, and most important, the myth of his invincibility has been shattered once and for all. It’s not UP alone, he’s lost crucial seats in several Hindi-speaking states and elsewhere too. Not to mention Banswara, where he delivered a poisonous speech but its people rejected him by 2.47 lakh votes.
Throughout his political career, he has remained undefeated. He entered the Gujarat assembly as its chief minister, and then Parliament as the prime minister. For the first time in his life, the man who taunted coalition governments as “weak” ones and flaunted an inflated and false masculinity, is now at the mercy of his allies – who can anytime pull the rug out from under his feet. To maintain the leftovers of dignity, the man with the 56-inch chest should quietly retire to the ghats of Kashi and oversee the MP local area development scheme in the town for the next five years.
Read this article in Hindi here.