By noon, there was a palpable sense of triumph at 11, Ashoka Road. Within hours, it had escalated to outright euphoria. After fifteen months, the BJP was celebrating — and for more reasons than one. It had won a resounding victory in Assam, opened its account in Kerala and Congress was decimated in three states.
While the saffron party managed to leave its imprint in territory that had so far eluded it, party leaders were also elated that its "Congress-mukt Bharat" chant was gaining momentum. The BJP now envisaged replacing the Congress as a pan-India party.
In Assam, a traditional Congress bastion, the BJP's victory is seen as a sign of the party making inroads into the northeast and rejection of the theory that the majoritarian party cannot win in states where there is a significant presence of the religious minorities, especially Muslims. The BJP has never before won an election in the northeast.
"Across India, people are placing their faith in BJP and see it as the party that can usher in all-round and inclusive development," prime minister Narendra Modi tweeted.
Later, in the day, amidst celebrations at the party office, Modi made a brief speech and described the result as an endorsement of the BJP's development mantra. He said the Assam result had come as a surprise for many and compared it with the BJP being in government in Jammu and Kashmir. "This will give us further strength and enthusiasm... The BJP was getting people's acceptance," Modi said before the meeting of the party's parliamentary board.
The results have brought a much-needed psychological boost to the BJP ahead of the Uttar Pradesh election in 2017, and later the 2019 Lok Sabha election. "The BJP has laid a strong foundation for 2019," BJP president Amit Shah said at a press conference. Giving credit to the performance of the Modi government, that completes two years, Shah said this was the beginning of the acknowledgment of the "politics of performance".
He said the results expanded the BJP's presence from Kerala to Kashmir and Kutch to Kamrup.
Shah's strategy this time, however, was to temper down the role of the party's central leadership and project state leaders in the campaign, unlike in Delhi and Bihar, where the party faced humiliating defeats. A party leader said the victory in Assam had reinforced the view that the high command alone should not call the shots. Modi held 28 rallies, of which eight each were in Assam and West Bengal, seven in Kerala, four in Tamil Nadu and one in Puducherry.
BJP's Ram Madhav, who was the man behind drafting the strategy in Assam, described the results as a clear message for the country. "Assam has given the BJP hope that it could spread its wings in other states where the "antipathy" to the party has been deep-seated. It also strengthens the belief that the Congress is in terminal decline," said BJP leader R Balashankar.
In Kerala, the BJP, which had never won a seat either in Lok Sabha or assembly, made a beginning with the Nemom seat where party veteran O Rajagopal was fighting a tough battle.
The party's vote share in the state rose to a highest ever 15 per cent from 10.63 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and six per cent in the 2011 assembly election. In 2014 local body elections, the BJP's vote share was 14 per cent.
The BJP strategy was aimed at consolidating the Hindu vote in the states, where the minority population was over 25 per cent. In Assam, with a minority population of 34.2 per cent, the party got a vote share of nearly 30 per cent, though this was marginally lower than that of Congress.
In Kerala, where the minority population was around 48 per cent, the BJP had forged an alliance with BJDS, a party formed by SNDP's Vellapally Natesan which had the support of the Ezhava vote, a backward class Community forming 23 per cent of the population.
In West Bengal, where the Muslim population is 28 per cent, the BJP got a vote share of 10.7 per cent, over nine per cent less than that in the Lok Sabha election.
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