The results of four State Assembly elections conducted alongside the Lok Sabha polls hold important political signals. Arunachal Pradesh , Sikkim , Odisha and Andhra Pradesh elected new Assemblies along with their Lok Sabha members. In Odisha, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has won a fifth consecutive term, leading his Biju Janata Dal to a sweeping victory, while in Sikkim, Pawan Kumar Chamling, the longest serving CM in India, will be bowing out after his Sikkim Democratic Front lost to the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha. Mr. Chamling became CM in 1994. The BJP won the Assembly election in Arunachal Pradesh — though this serves as a reminder of the curious ways in which the party has expanded its footprint in the Northeast. The Assembly election in 2014 was won by the Congress and Pema Khandu, the current Chief Minister, was a Congress MLA then. He became CM in 2016, shifted to the People’s Party of Arunachal as its leader, and then moved to the BJP, where he still remains. The BJP’s acquisitive approach to politics in general has been effective in the Northeast. Now, the SKM in Sikkim might ally with the party. The spectacular victory of the YSR Congress Party in Andhra Pradesh , in turn, is a reminder of the Congress’s persistent mishandling of the State since the abrupt death in an accident of Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the party’s then CM, better known as YSR, in 2009.
YSR had helped the Congress win more than three dozen Lok Sabha members from the undivided State in 2004 and 2009, the single biggest contingent for the party from any State and which powered the UPA-1 and UPA-2 in Parliament. Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, YSR’s son, sought the top post in the State after his father’s death, but the Congress high command, which has a high tolerance for demands of offsprings of party leaders, raised the bar in this instance. Mr. Reddy launched his regional outfit, the YSRCP, cleaned out the Congress, which was reeling under the adverse after-effects of the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, and has now won decisively across regions of the State nine years later. In Odisha, Mr. Patnaik’s victory in the Assembly was overwhelming but the BJP, which has won eight of the 21 Lok Sabha seats from the State, is sitting in the wings, having displaced the Congress as the principal Opposition party. The results in Odisha are also indicative of a new political trend whereby voters differentiate between the State and national elections. Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, States that chose the Congress over the BJP in Assembly elections only months ago, swung right back to the saffron party in the Lok Sabha polls. In Odisha, even with both elections being held simultaneously, this demarcation is stark, though the BJD still got more seats than the BJP. In Mr. Reddy’s case, he swept the Lok Sabha polls too, indicating that a hard-working regional leader with effective political messaging can resist top-down hyper-nationalism.
