A mature verdict

Particularly disastrous has been its performance in Delhi, where only eight months ago the party won a convincing victory in the Lok Sabha elections. Surely the lacklustre performance of the Vajpayee government had as much to do with the setback the BJP suffered as the inadequacies of Sahib Singh Verma and company.

The results also clearly revealed thatBhairon Singh Shekhawat failed to reverse the anti-BJP trend which was conspicuous in the Rajasthan Lok Sabha poll. On the contrary, there has been a further slide in the party8217;s popularity as the severe drubbing it received in that state shows.

This is equally true in Madhya Pradesh where the party had led in a majority of the constituencies in the Lok Sabha poll. In Mizoram, of course, people voted for change but the BJP was not a factor there.

Therefore, it is not illogical to see the verdict as a referendum on the performance of the BJP-led coalition government despite the Prime Minister8217;s assertion to the contrary.

Seen against this backdrop, the victory of the Congress has been won more by default than a positive swing in its favour. All that the party needed to do was to highlight the failures of the BJP government, particularly on the price front, to bounce back to power in the states concerned.

Even in Madhya Pradesh, it could convincingly pin the blame for the problems people faced on theCentral government. The security threat from Pakistan, the Pokharan experiments and the Saraswati Vandana issue that the BJP harped on failed to dispel the pungency of the missing onion. Besides, the BJP8217;s inability to keep the hotheads in the Sangh Parivar on a leash as manifested in the insensitive comments on the Jhabua rapes and incidents of that kind, also helped the Congress. This is not to overlook the fact that the gamble the Congress made in fielding a large number of women candidates and newer faces, often even at the cost of senior party members, has paid off.

Nonetheless it would be a misnomer to call it a Congress wave, let alone a Sonia wave, more so since it failed to retain Mizoram, which has been its preserve for quite some years. But Sonia Gandhi certainly provided the party a semblance of unity which helped it to present itself as a credible political force. Nonetheless, this was an election in which personalities did not matter too much. Nor were the voters guided by petty localissues. Certainly, these are factors that will stand India8217;s democracy in good stead.

The results make it clear that the polarisation process that the Lok Sabha poll had set in motion continues. The nation seems to be heading towards a two-party system as underscored by the clear decimation of the smaller parties.

In the three major states, the fight was essentially between the Congress and the BJP and among those which fell by the wayside were the Communists, the Janata Dal and the BSP. In many ways, this has been a trend-setting election. It8217;s now up to the Vajpayee-led government to see the writing on the wall.