As soon as voting closed on 19 May, Congress President Rahul Gandhi accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of capitulating to pressure from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a number of fronts: https://twitter.com/RahulGandhi/status/1130088269243330561 This is a serious set of allegations. Is there any truth to the claim that the ECI designed an election schedule …
Continue reading How the Election Commission aided the BJP in its phasing of the 2019 election
Stunned by the 0-3 verdict in the Hindi heartland, many BJP supporters are hoping that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma will counter the anti-incumbency that led to the party's defeat in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Some point to the slogan “Modi tujhse bair nahi, Vasundhara teri khair nahi” as a sign that voters were …
How can Modi be beaten in 2019? Following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s byelection reverses last week, the consensus in the commentariat clearly leans towards a grand alliance (or mahagathbandhan) of opposition parties of the sort that humbled BJP in Bihar in 2015 and in three recent Uttar Pradesh parliamentary byelections. The subtext is that an …
Continue reading Watch out BJP, you’re trailing behind the UPA in your bypoll performance
There’s nothing like the word Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) to make even the most boosterish Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporter sweat a little. And it’s not just because of what happened in Bihar in 2015, when an alliance of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United) and Indian National Congress (INC) inflicted a defeat on the …
Continue reading The compelling logic of a Grand Alliance in UP
Now that the dust has settled on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s historic victory in Uttar Pradesh, let’s get down to the big question: how close does it get the ruling National Democratic Alliance to a Rajya Sabha majority, and when? The government’s minority status in the RS has slowed and even halted important elements of …
As counting day on 11 March approaches, it seems as difficult as ever to gauge which way the political wind in Uttar Pradesh (UP) is blowing. Even before the campaign began, pre-election opinion polls offered little help, showing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress alliance neck and neck, with the Bahujan …
Continue reading Uttar Pradesh is the BJP’s to lose. Or is it?
After the furore over the Modi government imposing President's Rule in Congress-ruled Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand -- in seeming defiance of the Supreme Court's 1994 Bommai judgement -- supporters have pointed out that previous governments have used Article 356 more frequently to remove state governments: https://twitter.com/rupasubramanya/status/714094610306322432 There are two obvious problems with this line of argument: Legitimacy. It fails …
In an article posted on the website Newslaundry on 14 October, Rupa Subramanya argues that government statistics do not support the view that “there’s been some sort of upsurge in communal violence since the election of Narendra Modi”, contending that figures that show an increase of 25% in communal incidents in January-May 2015 vs. January-May …
Continue reading BJP-ruled states still more communally violent
An average of three recent opinion polls (here, here and here) shows that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)- and Janata Dal (United)(JD(U))-led alliances are locked in a statistical dead heat in the 2015 Bihar state election. This is a very creditable performance for the BJP. The party was long overshadowed by its partner of two …
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