Modi@2: BJP Will Continue to Target Cong for Polls in 2017-18

With polls due in eight states, the BJP will likely stick to its Congress-mukt Bharat strategy, writes Arati R Jerath

(As the NDA government completes two years in power, The Quint brings for its readers ‘Modi@2’, a special series evaluating the performance of the current regime.)

As Narendra Modi enters his third year as prime minister, the BJP can boast of starting delivery on at least one of his election promises: a Congress-mukt Bharat. After the last round of assembly elections, the Grand Old Party’s national footprint has shrunk to its smallest ever. In 2014, before the BJP began its bull run, the Congress had governments in 11 states. It is now down to 7; all of them, except Karnataka, are small and politically inconsequential.

On the other hand, Amit Shah’s vow when he became BJP president shortly after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls has turned out to be a jumla. He had boasted then that the BJP would paint the country, “from Kashmir to Kanyakumari’’, in hues of saffron. Reality checks didn’t take that long.

Humiliating defeats at the hands of two regional satraps in 2015 -- AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi and Nitish Kumar in Bihar -- and the resounding victories of two more chieftains this year, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, have punctured the Shah balloon. A Congress-mukt Bharat is not necessarily a saffronised Bharat, as the BJP is realising much to its despair.