This has been a very strange election. i am going to pen what i have come across the past few days.
1. Just 3-4 months before elections, a lot of the congress party people were leaving the party and the morale looked down atleast quite openly for that party. Did it lead to over confidence on the BJP side? But the votes secured by the INDI Alliance even after the defections and no open anti-incumbency say other wise. So the votes have more or less stuck with the Congress party even after the defections of the leaders, this generally doesn't happen when leaders move as they take a chunk of their followers/votes with them.
a. most of the defecting people are senior guys and they should have a pulse on what their supporters were feeling if they were going to stick or leave the congress itself.
2. The other aspect seen in this election was everything that was seen as a problem for the BJP or built up a year or so in advance has yielded results for the INDI Alliance. That shows that Indi's targetted campaign has worked or BJP has lacked communication or maybe a bit of both.
a. the jaat wrestlers agitation and the subsequent khap panchayats diktats from Haryana and western UP has engineered a chunk of votes away from the BJP even after aligning with Jayant Chaudary. voting for samajwadi party which was primarily responsible for muzzafar nagar riots in 2013.
b. the agitation in ladakh asking for article 371 that has turned people against the BJP with sonam wangchuk leading the agitation. there was an interview with Suresh Kotchatill and the ladakhi council where they are happy with the modi govt sanctioning money (about 6000crores) for development of ladakh, there are fruit juice processing plants and some wool processing plants and some more. yet the ladakhi council has said that it has gone very deep into the people minds that they should have article 371 and numbers game has decimated the BJP with the shias of kargil putting in only one cadidate and the buddhists from ladakh having two candidates - one from BJP and the other from pro Art 371 group. The BJP finished 3rd.
c. BJP has lost both seats in Manipur with the church siding against the BJP and the meitei side also not voting for the BJP.
d. The farmer protests has seen BJP dented in Punjab, Haryana, loosing in the lekimpur Kheri constituency as well.
3. Rahul gandhi has barely campaigned in Raibareilly and Amethi yet congress won with really big margins. Smriti Irani who has done some work on roads, hospitals and AIIMS is accused of just abusing Rahul gandhi, but apparently the same is not applicable to rahul gandhi when he was seen participating in mocking of VP Jagdeep Dhankhad or congressi trolling or calling Smriti Irani names all throughout these 5 years.
4. the RSS did some 1 lakh sabhas big and small in 24 days in MP to get BJP that record margin of victories, was that not done in UP and Maha?
5. The major pollsters all missed the arithmetic, pulse on the ground with the likes of yogendra yadav not withstanding.
6. It seems to be slowly coming to the fore that "maybe" the uppercaste has more or less stayed with BJP (maybe except brahmins) and a lot of sc/st votes has gone to congress alliance with the campaign that BJP would remove reservations ( i didn't believe that still now, but a colleague of mine was saying that his builder in Maha has said reservations will be taken out in last year Oct-Nov as its a BJP's internal memo and both are hardcore hindutva wadis, somehow this part I have not heard untill this election cycle).
a. The same campaign style of telangana where BRS and BJP was seen as the same to vote for congress seem to have been used against Mayawati's vote bank with reservation removal fears and calling Mayawati as BJP's B team.
7. BJP probably did a little too little too late in addressing the reservation and congress has used deep fake videos saying that Amit Shah ahs said he will remove the reservations.
8. It seems like this election has played out like Bihar 2015 where it was BJP vs the rest and BJP was decimated in the caste equations. This will be further refined as we go forward as the only way to defeat BJP but that has further complications as Congress rises, how will that play out with regional parties that are now unifying the Muslim vote with a dominant caste ( yadav's in UP, Jaats in haryana or something like that).
9. The Maha elections seem to have BJP voteshare dropping by 5 % from previous election and the INC -Shiva Sena (Uddhav) -NCP (sharad pawar) gaining seats with independents gaining a chunk of votes in their victories.
aftermath of the election.
1. Now that the congress has almost doubled its seat count, its going to go on the attack with what ever news it can lay it hands on fake or real doesn't matter. They will not allow the Lok Sabha to function.
2. The people blame BJP IT cell as useless (and useless they may be), but i find that most so called right wing or govt supporting channels to be equally clueless (none raised any issue when the elections were on going or during ticket distribution), but are now busy pedalling Yogi vs Amit Shah and upper caste votes moving away from the BJP when it looks like reservations and mayawatis jatav votes (who are ambedkarites as they come) have voted for the Congress alliance.
3. We will be bombarded with news about how Modi and Shah are going to be replaced with some xyz from RSS and how Yogi will sent home (this is straight from Arvind Kejriwal and AAP's campaigning style. This was what had happened after the Bengal vidhan sabha elections and every day we were seeing news about Modi Shah being replaced, along with yogi also. It continued till 2022 UP elections untill Yogi became the CM again and all the sounds just mysteriously disappeared).
