Prime Minister Narendra Modi stands tall, following the Bharatiya Janta Party’s demolition of the SP-Congress coalition, in India’s most populous State of Uttar Pradesh (UP), where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 325 seats to the latter’s very modest 68 for the contested 403 Assembly seats. No ordinary victory, this, but a tsunami. UP was the cynosure of all eyes. Narendra Modi threw his hat into the ring, campaigning tirelessly with his message of development and his excoriation of the Akhilesh Yadav regime. His Man Friday, Amit Shah. calibrated the strategy on the ground in meticulous detail, choosing candidates through local constituency consultations: charisma and attention to detail produced the critical mass of a truly extraordinary triumph. As Congress leader P. Chidambaram acknowledged, Mr Modi is without peer on the national stage, the tallest figure in the land by many cubits.. He learnt the lessons from the BJP defeat in Bihar two years ago and came back stronger. His opponents counted on a demonetization backlash but none was seen. The Modi wave crested to daunting heights.
However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Congress Party. Having been trounced UP and Uttakhand, Congress achieved a notable victory in Punjab, where it demolished the governing Akali Dal-BJP coalition. Congress leader Captain Amarinder Singh played a true captain’s innings, the victory was his and not Rahul Gandhi’s, was the pointed comment of Navjot Singh Siddhu, cricketer-turned politician, who played a seminal role in the Congress victory.
Congress organization was top class, as was its planning. Hopefully this will encourage leadership change. India needs a stable two-party system. The poor showing of Arvind Kejriwal’s ballyhooed Aam Aadmi and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress outside their bailiwicks in Delhi anf Bengal respectively illustrates this point.
Congress has done well in Goa defeating the ruling BJP. Manipur has been a neck-and-neck Congress-BJP tussle, with a BJP-led coalition likely to form the next government. It has indeed been a riveting weekend.
