BJP fails to reach majority in 2024, with 22 Union ministers losing seats. The new cabinet sees L Murugan retaining his position, while Annamalai is not included. Key reasons for the performance are analyzed.
New Delhi: Having failed to cross the halfway mark of 272 on its own in the 18th Lok Sabha, BJP leaders have begun introspection into the reasons that led to the disappointing performance. Party office bearers maintain that while Prime Minister Narendra Modi has almost maintained his popularity among the voters, several factors like rural distress, job losses, strong opposition alliance, and the growing perception among Dalits that the BJP will scrap reservation and rewrite the constitution if it achieves the "400 par" target are the primary reasons for its dismal performance.
Apathy among the rank and file of the BJP is being seen as another major factor for the decrease in numbers. The cause for this laid-back attitude was the belief that since the party is headed towards a grand victory and the Opposition comprises a disparate group, there was no competition for the BJP. This led many workers to take out their ire against a candidate not of their liking, believing a loss in his/her seat is not going to upset the overall result.
The anger was fanned from the declaration of the first list of candidates itself where the BJP retained most of its MPs. A total of 22 Union ministers have lost this time.
"The induction of corrupt leaders from other parties into the BJP at the rate of almost one per day in the last few weeks actually dampened the spirit of the die-hard workers," a senior BJP leader told ET.
A quarter of the BJP candidates in this Lok Sabha election were turncoats and naturally there was no enthusiasm among the cadre to campaign for the "outsiders". The BJP had realized from the low voter turnout since the first phase on April 19 that its workers were not venturing out. Even stern messages sent down from the top rung did not have much effect due to the disenchantment.
An inside joke in the BJP was that there was no need for journalists to go looking for sound bites of other parties as the turncoats from virtually all of them were present in the ruling party and could express those views.
The fear that the BJP would rewrite the constitution if it gets over a 2/3rd majority in the Lower House also worked against it. In Uttar Pradesh, where the party has been reduced to half its previous strength, this is being cited as a major reason. "What else explains the victory of Chandra Shekhar Azad, a Dalit leader, from Nagina (West UP) seat? With BSP appearing inactive in these elections, Dalit votes in seats around Varanasi and Faizabad saw this segment shift its vote to Congress and Samajwadi Party," a BJP leader, in charge of seats in this region, told ET.
BSP's vote share was reduced to 9.39% in 2024 in UP from around 19% in 2019.
The Congress has jumped to a vote share of 9.46% in UP and six seats from its lone victory in Rae Bareli seat won by Sonia Gandhi in 2019. The SP got a 33.59% vote share this time. Prime Minister Narendra Modi won from Varanasi by a margin of 1.5 lakh votes, a big drop from a 4.5 lakh vote margin in 2019. The BJP lost Faizabad, where the Ayodhya Ram temple is located, despite the consecration in January. The temple issue did not sway the voters in 2024. The quashing of reservation threat also dented the BJP's prospects in Bihar.
With this backdrop, and the swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi’s third term as Prime Minister happening today, BJP has announced the Ministers list for 2024 (their portfolios haven’t been announced yet).
Gujarat:
1. Amit Shah
2. S Jaishankar
3. Mansukh Mandaviya
4. CR Patil
5. Nimu Ben Bambhniya
Odisha:
1. Ashwini Vaishnaw
2. Dharmendra Pradhan
3. Jual Oram
Karnataka:
1. Nirmala Sitharaman
2. HDK
3. Prahlad Joshi
4.Shobha Karandlaje
5. V Somanna
Maharashtra:
1. Piyush Goyal
2. Nitin Gadkari
3. Pratap Rao Jadhav
4. Raksha Khadse
5. Ram Das Athawale
Goa:
1. Sripad Naik
J&K:
1. Jitendra Singh
Himachal:
1. JP Nadda
Madhya Pradesh:
1. Shivraj Singh Chouhan
2. Jyotiraditya Scindia
3. Savitri Thakur
4. Virendra Kumar
Uttar Pradesh:
1. Hardeep Singh Puri
2. Rajnath Singh
3. Jayant Choudhary
4. Jitin Prasad
5. Pankaj Chaudhary
6. BL Verma
7. Anupriya Patel
8. Kamlesh Paswan
9. SP Singh Baghel
Bihar:
1. Chirag Paswan
2. Giriraj Singh
3. Jitan Ram Manjhi
4. Ramnath Thakur
5. Lalan Singh
6. Niryanand Rai
7. Raj Bhushan
8. Satish Dubey
Arunachal:
1. Kiren Rijiju
Rajasthan:
1. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat
2. Arjun Ram Meghwal
3. Bhupender Yadav
4. Bhagirath Chaudhry
Haryana:
1. ML Khattar
2. Rao Inderjeet Singh
Kerala:
1. Suresh Gopi
Telangana:
1. G Kishan Reddy
2. Bandi Sanjay
Tamil Nadu:
1. L Murugan
Jharkhand:
1. AJSU MP Chandrashekhar Choudhary
2. Annapurna Devi
Andhra Pradesh:
1. Dr. Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani
2. Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu
3. Srinivasa Varma
West Bengal:
1. Shantanu Thakur
2. Sukanta Majumdar
Punjab:
1. Ravneet Singh Bittu
Assam:
1. Sarbananda Sonowal
Uttarakhand:
1. Ajay Tamta
Delhi:
1. Harsh Malhotra