New Delhi (TIP)- Ahead of the election results, all talk was about the Bharatiya Janata Party significantly expanding its presence in the southern part of the country, improving its seat and vote share. To some extent, the party achieved this — it won eight seats in Telangana, up from four in 2019, with its vote share increasing from 19.5% to 35.2%; it won three seats in Andhra Pradesh, thanks to its alliance with the Telugu Desam Party and the Jana Sena, with its vote share increasing from 0.96% to 11.3%; and it won one in Kerala, with its vote share increasing from 12.9% to 16.7%, and comparing well with the LDF’s 33.3%.
But in the state where it expected to take over the mantle of main opposition from its erstwhile ally, the AIADMK, and where it is led by the vocal and articulate K Annamalai, considered by many to be a next-gen leader of the BJP, the party managed to increase its vote share only to 11.3% from 3.6%, and won no seats. Even Tamilisai Soundararajan, the former governor of Telangana who resigned her post to contest from Chennai South lost to her DMK rival, Thamizhachi Thangapandian.
And in Karnataka, where it won 25 of the 28 seats on offer in 2019 (and supported an independent who won the 26th), the BJP won 17 seats (19 with its ally JDS), with a 46.1% share of the vote, down from 51.4% in 2019.
Taken together, that isn’t all-that-bad a performance, but it is definitely not as good as the party would have wanted — and not good enough to offset losses in UP, West Bengal, and Maharashtra. It is also not commensurate with the effort put in by the party, and its campaigner-in-chief, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BJP’s southern focus began soon after its triumph in 2019, when it won the Lok Sabha elections with a massive mandate but failed to secure any seats in three states, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
Three years earlier, the BJP had drawn up a plan to transcend the barriers in the southern and eastern states that made up the coromandel belt. But, while it won 18 of the 42 seats in West Bengal and 8 of the 21 in Odisha, the southern states barring Karnataka proved to be insurmountable fortress.
“This did not sit well with the party bosses. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah were emphatic that for the BJP to grow as a formidable political entity it will have to shatter the impression that it is a north Indian party or that it is no match to the regional parties,” said a senior party leader familiar.
State units were instructed to work out details of restructuring the party units, mobilising cadre, identifying leaders with mass appeal, aligning with parties that had a hold over influential vote banks and propagate Brand Modi.
“After 2014, Modi became a household name and was popular across castes and classes. While this showed in results in nearly all of North India and large parts of the west, there was a gap in the South. We had to then focus on the power of the brand and build a bridge between Modi and south,” said the leader quoted above.
In each of the five states the outreach was designed keeping in mind cultural sensitivities, local traditions, demography and floating voters who were not opposed to BJP and its brand of Hindutva.
It wasn’t enough. The INDIA bloc, led by the DMK in Tamil Nadu, won all 39 seats. In Karnataka, the Congress managed to win nine seats, eight more than in 2019. And in Kerala, the UDF won 18 seats and the LDF, one.
But local leaders pointed to the vote share
“One should not only look at the seats, but also, at the vote share. Between 1967 and 2024 the combined vote share of the AIDMK and the DMK has been between 67 to 74%. This time it is below 50%… the BJP’s has risen to 10% from 3.6% in 2019. From now on politics in the state, will be tripolar. The BJP’s march towards winning the assembly polls begins now,” said R Srinivasan, general secretary of the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit and its candidate from Madurai.
In Kerala, where its decision to raise the Sabarimala issue ended up benefiting the Congress in 2019, the BJP opted for development over Hindutva, but could not convert the rise in vote share into more than a single seat, with efforts to build bridges with both Christians and the powerful Ezhava community which accounts for 23% of the electorate coming a cropper. It will also not escape the BJP’s attention that some of its success in the south has come on the back of alliances.
The power of alliances
In Karnataka, the JDS, a family-run party that had been in the BJP’s crosshairs for perpetrating dynasty politics, was inducted into the NDA to shore up the numbers after losing the state polls in 2023. The JDS’s hold over the Vokalliga vote bank was considered a key reason for the alliance. The public outrage over allegations of sexual harassment and rape against JDS scion and Hassan lawmaker Prajwal Revanna may have hurt the BJP, but the alliance has helped it in the state. The JD(S) itself has won two seats.
In Andhra Pradesh, where the party’s organisational capacity has come in for censure from the central leadership on more than one occasion, the tie up with Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena paid off. The TDP broke its ties with the BJP in 2018 over the issue of delay in granting special status to the state but has emerged as a dependable ally adding to NDA’s overall tally. The BJP won 3 seats in the state, and the alliance 21, of a total of 25.
Driving the narrative
The party attempted to drive the narrative in each of the states. Whether it was attacking the Pinnarayi Vijayan government in Kerala for corruption and irregularities or the Karnataka government for mooting reservation for Muslims under the OBC quota, the BJP kept stoking the fire. In Telangana it went all out against the BRS, accusing the party of irregularities. And with the help of governors, it also targeted state governments, most notably in Tamil Nadu.
None of this seems to have worked.
“There were many deficiencies. For instance we could not counter the fears that the new delimitation exercise to be carried out after 2026 will result in the southern states losing out on seats…or the BJP wants to withdraw quotas” said a second BJP leader who asked not to be named.
The leadership issue
Although PM Modi was the central figure of the BJP’s outreach in the south, the party groomed new faces to emerge as leaders on the ground. Consequently, a bunch of new leaders dominated the headlines, in Tamil Nadu, the BJP hustled its way into the political arena, led by a young and belligerent K Annamalai.
In Telangana , while Bandi Sanjay led the campaign against the BRS with a state-wide Yatra, he was abruptly replaced by union minister G Kishen Reddy as the state president and in Andhra, D Purandeswari became the first woman state president.
Yet, none of them managed to take on the regional satraps. Source: HT