Northeast Elections 2018: Why BJP is so desperate to hype its Tripura win

Of late, BJP and party chief Amit Shah’s cloak of invincibility has been perceived to be slipping.

Northeast Elections 2018  : The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) celebrations over winning Tripura, and forming coalition governments through the back door in Meghalaya and Nagaland, continued at its parliamentary party meeting on Tuesday morning.

BJP Members of Parliament (MPs) distributed sweets, and raised slogans that now it was the party’s turn to win Karnataka.

Yes, the BJP won Tripura handsomely. But it won neither Meghalaya, where it got two of the 60 seats, nor Nagaland. The Congress was decimated in Tripura and Nagaland, and emerged the single-largest party in Meghalaya.

Together, the three states send five MPs to the Lok Sabha – Tripura and Meghalaya send two each and Nagaland sends one.

The BJP has put some thought into its strategy to continue celebrating its Tripura win, and form coalition governments in Meghalaya and Nagaland. It needs to restore the impression of invincibility that it had managed to create after its victories in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in March 2017.

However, in that series of Assembly polls, too, the BJP had lost Punjab. Its incumbent government in Goa failed to emerge as the single-largest party, and it was not the single-largest party in Manipur either. But it formed governments in these two states, thanks mostly to behind-the-scenes machinations.

The past few months have not been very good for the BJP and the Narendra Modi government. There have been sustained farmer and trade union protests, and the government has had to try to reach out to farmers.

The Modi government’s claims on providing jobs have been punctured as well. It is seen to have failed to deliver on its promise of creating 20 million jobs a year.
Additionally, the Punjab National Bank fraud has punched holes in its claims of providing corruption-free governance.

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