Changing Chief Ministers about a year before the elections to beat anti-incumbency against them, and win — this formula has worked yet again for the BJP. The party has been able to edge out the challenge from the Congress-Left alliance and the Tipra Mohta to clinch a win in Tripura.
Ten months ago, the BJP had surprised all by dropping its chief minister for four years in Tripura, Biplab Deb, and replacing him with Manik Saha. This was the fifth chief minister changed by the BJP in several states shortly before elections, including two chief ministers in Uttarakhand, the chief minister in Gujarat and in Karnataka. BJP won the elections in Uttarakhand and Gujarat, and now it won Tripura. Karnataka goes to polls in May under new chief minister Basavraj Bommai.
Election Results Live
In Himachal Pradesh, where the party did not opt to change its sitting chief minister in Jai Ram Thakur despite some voices advocating it, the party lost power there earlier this year. All eyes are now on Madhya Pradesh where the BJP has persisted with chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who has been in the chair for over 18 years.
BJP leaders say the win in Tripura is also due to a strong development model in the state in the last five years, but having a new CM helped it securing a narrow win in a tight fight.
The ‘CM issue’ had come to the forefront in the BJP in 2019 after the party lost power in Jharkhand, few months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had won an empathic victory in the Centre. There were voices in the BJP before those elections that chief minister Raghubar Das should be dropped due to his unpopularity but the BJP did not take the gamble and lost to the JMM-Congress alliance. The Jharkhand ‘lesson’ seems to have determined BJP’s course since.
Uttarakhand was one state where no party has been able to repeat power. Nearly 11 months before the state went to polls in 2022, the party changed its chief minister from Trivendra Singh Rawat to Tirath Singh Rawat, and then changed the latter too. Pushkar Dhami, who became the CM in July 2021, led the party to a historic win in February last year. Similarly, in Gujarat, the BJP changed its chief minister Vijay Rupani 13 months before the state elections and replaced him with Bhupendrabhai Patel. It won the Gujarat assembly elections last December.
In Karnataka, the saffron party replaced BS Yediyurappa with BS Bommai as the chief minister in July 2021, ahead of the state elections scheduled this May.
A senior BJP leader said the party realises that sometimes the public is satisfied with the party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi but not satisfied with the CM who may not have been able to perform or there was a sense of public fatigue with the CM face. “Having a new CM who is youthful and comes with no baggage arrests any anti-incumbency and prevents damage,” a senior BJP leader reasoned.
The formula seems to be working for the BJP in state elections.
In the Assam elections of 2022, the BJP did not change the CM but made it a point to not project the sitting Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal as the CM face amidst a general perception that Himanta Biswa Sarma was a more popular figure. Sonowal was eventually replaced with Sarma after the BJP won the elections.
Read all the Latest News here
Comments
0 comment