Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s repeated trips to Tamil Nadu and Kerala in recent months and Bharatiya Janata Party’s move to win over sitting Aam Admi Party and Congress MPs in Punjab are being interpreted as an effort to offset the likely loss it may suffer in some other states in the coming parliamentary election. At the same time, the saffron party has been compelled to work overtime because old friends Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the main opposition party in Tamil Nadu, are no longer its alliance partners.
Particularly, in Tamil Nadu, it is trying to fill the political vacuum created after the demise of Jayalalithaa in 2016 and the subsequent weakening of her party. It is contesting on 20 seats while four other candidates would be fighting on its Lotus symbol. It has left 15 other seats for relatively smaller parties.
Southern campaign
In the first 75 days of 2024 till mid-March when India went into the poll mode following the announcement of dates by the Election Commission, Modi made six trips to Tamil Nadu and five to Kerala. Several more are likely to follow when electioneering picks up. According to the latest schedule, he would campaign for four consecutive days between April 9 and 12 in Tamil Nadu and would even spend nights there.
Also read: Dissecting Modi’s Pre-Poll Visits to the South
In January, ahead of the Ram Mandir consecration, he spent 11 days in south India. He made pilgrimages to temples related to Ram and held road shows.
Besides, Modi undertook fast during this whole period. He broke it in Ayodhya on January 22.
Whatever may be the short and long-term objectives of his southward journeys, there is no dearth of independent political pundits who believe that the BJP, like in the past, is barking up the wrong tree and wasting its time, energy and resources as it is still difficult to make inroads into Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The socio-religious reality does not favour its growth.
The BJP drew blank in 2019 when it contested five seats in alliance with AIADMK. The saffron party, notwithstanding enormous efforts, could not capitalise on the Pulwama terror attack and subsequent Balakot bombing. The DMK-Congress-led alliance swept the election winning 38 out of 39 seats. In contrast, the BJP had won one seat in 2014, though there was no alliance with the AIADMK.
In south India, barring Karnataka, the saffron brigade has been making such efforts since long but has gained little foothold. The party, however, once again hopes to better its performance. During the heydays of the Ram Janambhoomi movement and even later the BJP, under Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi launched country-wide Yatras from Kanyakumari.
In 1998 All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam joined the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government at the Centre. It was a year later that is in April 1999 that the party supremo Jayalalithaa withdrew the support of its 18 MPs. The two ministers in the Vajpayee cabinet quit their posts. The NDA lost the subsequent confidence motion by just one vote.
In 1999 post-Kargil general election the saffron party roped in DMK, which was ruling the state. However, on the eve of the 2004 parliamentary election, the BJP once again befriended AIADMK, which came to power in the 2001 Assembly poll. However, the move backfired as the DMK-Congress alliance swept the election.
In contrast, the BJP is not aligning with any of the two main parties this time. There are serious differences between the state unit of the saffron party and AIADMK. While Modi may, during his trips to the state, praise late chief minister Jayalalithaa, the Tamil Nadu unit BJP president K Annamalai and other office-bearers are extremely critical of her. It was on this very ground that in September 2023 the AIADMK snapped its ties with the BJP.
File photo. Tamil Nadu BJP president Annamalai and AIADMK chief E. Palaniswami with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: K. Annamalai/Facebook.
The BJP tried to use the Sengol card during the inauguration of the new Parliament building on May 28 last year. Now Modi is charging that the then Indira Gandhi government gave a tiny and uninhabited island of 285 acre (Katchatheevu) to Sri Lanka some 50 years back. It is to be seen whether these issues work or not in Tamil Nadu.
Kerala scenario
In Kerala too, the BJP made a lot of efforts last year. The Prime Minister made a visit to Sacred Heart Cathedral in Delhi on the occasion of Easter Sunday (April 9). A fortnight later he made a trip to Kerala as a part of an exercise to woo Christians, especially those engaged in rubber plantations in the central part of the state. Modi held a road show in the state on April 24, which is just two days after the formation of the National Progressive Party by a couple of Christian leaders formerly associated with the Kerala Congress (not to be confused with the Indian National Congress).
There were reports that the NPP may join the National Democratic Alliance. But after Manipur was rocked by large-scale violence on and after May 3, the whole scenario changed in this south Indian state. Many Christians lost their lives and churches were targeted in Meitei-Kuki clashes in Manipur.
Yet Modi had not given up and has launched repeated expeditions to Kerala, where Muslims (26.5%) and Christians (18.4%) form 45% of the population.
In both the 2021 Assembly and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Christians and Muslims overwhelmingly voted for the United Democratic Front and Left Democratic Front.
The BJP is playing the wait and watch game. Though it has recently wooed the son and daughter of a couple of prominent Congress leaders, the saffron party is waiting for the decline of Left parties as in West Bengal and Tripura. But Kerala is somewhat different from them. As here the LDF and the Congress-led UDF have been winning elections alternatively – not in 2021 – it is keeping both the parties organisationally intact.
What had happened in West Bengal and Tripura was that the Left ruled for 34 years and a quarter century respectively. This long control on power actually created a sense of complacency. Thus, once it lost power the entire war machine collapsed. In the ensuing uncertainty, many lower-level functionaries crossed over to either Trinamool Congress or the BJP.
Going solo in Punjab
In Punjab, however, the BJP is keeping its fingers crossed, especially in the Ludhiana- Jalandhar industrial belt which has a sizeable migrant as well as Dalit population. The Congress MP Ravneet Singh Bittu and AAP’s Sushil Kumar Rinku are from this belt. Ludhiana with a 66% Hindu population is a fertile ground for the expansion of the BJP, which was feeling cornered in the state politics, especially after the farmers’ movement and collapse of alliance with Shiromani Akali Dal after the passage of three farm laws in September 2020.
Also read: No Alliance Between SAD and BJP In Punjab As Akalis Focus On Recovering Lost Ground Among Farmers
The state has 38% Hindu votes which till recently was inclined towards the Congress. The AAP made inroads into this vote bank in the 2022 Assembly poll. The BJP is seeing the collapse of its alliance with SAD as a blessing in disguise. It is going to contest all the 13 seats. Now, it has a couple of Sikh figures too such as former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh and now Bittu. The Patiala Urban MP, Preneet Kaur, who crossed over to the BJP, is the wife of Captain.
Rinku is a Hindu Dalit face. Scheduled Castes form 33% of the state population, divided between Sikhs and Hindus. The saffron party is trying its level best to exploit the situation created after the decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party in the state. Mind it, Kanshi Ram was a Dalit Sikh hailing from Punjab.
However, nothing can be said about Punjab where the BJP in alliance with SAD failed miserably to exploit the nationalistic sentiment created after the Pulwama terror attack and Balakot bombing. This was so notwithstanding the fact that it is a bordering state which contributes substantially to the Indian Army.
