Why West Bengal Won’t Compensate BJP for Hindi Heartland Losses
Our prediction is that the BJP’s seat tally could vary between a deficit of one seat and a surplus of four seats, with respect to its performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s spectacular victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha election was based on it sweeping most of north, central and west India. In the Hindi heartland states, its tally was 190 out of 225.
From this high point, there were only two ways for the BJP to sustain its hold over power. First, it needed to continue the domination in areas already captured in 2014. Crucially, this meant maintaining the count of seats in the Hindi belt. Second, it had to spread to new areas, which meant winning more seats in south and east India.
In
an earlier article we have argued that the party’s first strategy could be in serious trouble. In the six Hindi-speaking states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the BJP could lose 75 seats compared to its 2014 tally. In this article, we show that its second strategy to win more seats in the largest state in the east – West Bengal – may only succeed partially, if at all.
West Bengal is an electorally important state in the east; it sends 42 MPs to the Lok Sabha. In 2014, the BJP won only two of these 42 seats, indicating sizeable room for improvement. It is not surprising, therefore, that the party has been paying considerable attention to the state in the recent past.
https://thewire.in/politics/elections-2019-bjp-west-bengal
