Prime Minister Narendra Modi may also take great pride in the win in the Hindi heartland state, as he is partly responsible for the campaign plan and execution that eliminated the weariness factor from the Chouhan regime.
Given that the BJP had not fielded a chief ministerial candidate in any of the states that saw polls in this election cycle, Modi would be choosing the next chief minister, as the party attempts to attribute all of the party’s success to him in the states where the polls were held. The BJP fielded a number of central leaders and Union ministers, including Prahlad Patel and Kailash Vijayvargiya, in the polls with the idea that anyone might become the next chief minister.
The fact that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was the primary campaigner will force the establishment party to consider its future after the setback. Rahul Gandhi had predicted a few months ago that the Congress would win 150 seats in the polls. His words implied that the BJP-ruled state was “much rotten.”
The BJP’s triumph in Madhya Pradesh is noteworthy because there seemed to be strong anti-incumbency sentiment at the grassroots level, which led to several exit polls projecting the Congress to win more than 150 seats in the 230-member assembly.
Since the Jana Sangh era, Madhya Pradesh has been the epicentre of Hindutva discourse, and this has made the state a haven for the BJP. In the face of a challenging campaign, the BJP leadership went above and beyond, as evidenced by the fact that during one of his travels, Home Minister Amit Shah solely addressed appeasing the rebels. In opposition to this, there was a lot of discussion about how the Congress campaign would intensify early and fade in the latter stages.
Nath’s lacklustre performance was made evident when he rejected Akhilesh Yadav, the head of the Samajwadi Party, when he asked for a few seats so that his party could run for office in the state. The SP is an important factor in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and a major partner in the I.N.D.I.A. coalition. Additionally, Nath was unable to win over the Left parties and form an alliance with the Gondwana Gantantra Party.
The issue facing the Congress is that, despite losing elections in Madhya Pradesh since 2003, it has not established a second tier of leadership in the state. Although it narrowly prevailed in the 2018 assembly elections with 114 seats, the Kamal Nath government was overthrown three years prior by the desertion of Jyotiraditya Scindia and about twenty party MLAs.
What Madhya Pradesh has seen is not the Congress’s downfall but rather the BJP’s victory. At a time when the Congress had completely abandoned the state to Nath and Digvijaya Singh, the BJP’s choice of candidates, election strategy, and campaigning were professional.
Should Chouhan’s welfare initiatives have secured the BJP’s win in Madhya Pradesh, then the Congress ought to have emerged victorious in the elections held in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, given Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel also demonstrated no tardiness in initiating and carrying out social schemes. However, that did not take place. Either the Congress overestimated its chances of winning or it misjudged the BJP, which fought valiantly until the very end.
The Congress is anticipated to take a serious hit after its losses in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and it may use this as leverage to push for the passage of the I.N.D.I.A. legislation before the Lok Sabha elections. As the deadline for the Lok Sabha elections approaches, the BJP is expected to engage in a fierce campaign. Identifying a ‘Revanth Reddy’ in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh is necessary for Rahul Gandhi to confront it.
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