Lord Ram did not let PM Modi down, BJP did

Modi invoking Lord Jagannath was in order, given the BJP’s spectacular show in Odisha. But ‘Jai Shri Ram’ was missing from his speech to both the BJP and NDA.

Addressing Bharatiya Janata Party workers Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the people “showed full faith” in his party in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. His body language and facial expressions—and also those of leaders sitting on the dais—belied it. They looked glum, in disbelief. Smiles were faint.

Modi invoking Lord Jagannath was in order, given the BJP’s spectacular show in Odisha. But ‘Jai Shri Ram’ was missing from his speech. He hailed the National Democratic Alliance’s performance under the leadership of Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar. Remember the last time he named a partner in his victory speech? The banner at the Modi event had variations of ‘Thank you India’ written in multiple Indian languages. The most prominent were two lines in Urdu—“shukriya” (thank you) and “meharbani Hindustan” (grateful to Hindustan).

On Friday, addressing the NDA, Modi looked upbeat. He called it “an organic alliance” and underlined how “consensus” is “very necessary” to run the country. He invoked “Mahaprabhu Jagannath” thrice, seemingly unmindful of the “Jai Shri Ram” slogan being raised by a section of the audience. He remembered former NDA partners such as Parkash Singh Badal, Sharad Yadav and Balasaheb Thackeray, calling them great leaders. There was no mention of the achievements of his last tenure, such as the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya or the triple talaq law. Future agendas—uniform civil code and ‘one nation, one election’—also found no mention. He also spoke about the opportunity to serve Christian brothers and
sisters.

The mood, setting and contents of his speeches to the BJP and the NDA said it all.

They indicate how PM Modi and the BJP are bracing themselves for a new order. He must be squirming at the very thought of having to seek Naidu’s and Kumar’s—or even Chirag Paswan’s—consent before taking a major policy decision. What will happen to Modi’s aura if he starts holding consultations and deliberations to build consensus? It just might take away his iqbal or power and grandeur. He definitely won’t be the same Modi any more.

A look at the numbers

Who should he blame for bringing him to this? Let’s look at a few pointers that I have borrowed from my colleague Amogh Rohmetra’s stories based on data analysis:

• The BJP won 72 per cent (or 95) of the 132 seats in which it dropped sitting MPs and 66 per cent where it fielded incumbent ones (111 out of 168). Of the 132 MPs who were dropped in 2024, 53 had won with a margin of at least three lakh votes in 2019.  
• 110 of the BJP’s 441 candidates in this election were those who joined the BJP during the Modi era—defectors who came to the BJP from other parties. 69 of these defectors (62 per cent) lost. Out of 26 candidates who joined the BJP this year, 21 lost. 
• The BJP lost 49 of 224 seats that it had won, with a margin of over 50 per cent, in 2019. 
• The BJP’s strike rate in direct contests with the Congress fell from 92 per cent in 2019 to 71 per cent in 2024. The Congress won 62 of the 216 seats where the two parties directly fought against each other. The BJP won 154. 
• The BJP’s strike rate over seven phases varied from 35 to 70 per cent. In the first phase, the BJP had contested 77 seats of which it won 30—a strike rate of 39 per cent. It was after the first phase that PM Modi alleged that if the Congress came to power, it would redistribute wealth, including women’s mangalsutras, among the Muslims. The strike rate went up to 67 and 70 per cent in the next two phases. In the fourth and fifth phases, it went down to 55 and 45 per cent. It went up to 61 per cent in the next phase but came down to 35 per cent in the last phase.

Let me add a couple of more pointers:

• • Modi’s victory margin in his Varanasi seat was 1.52 lakh votes, down from 4.79 lakh in 2019. His vote share went down to 54.24 per cent from 63.62 per cent in 2019. Such a reduced victory margin must be hurting the Prime Minister.
  • The BJP lost in Faizabad, the constituency that includes Ayodhya, where the grand Ram temple was built.

The party let Modi down

What are the takeaways from these pointers?
First, dropping MPs in the name of winnability made little difference to the BJP’s tally. Take for instance the case of the Mumbai North-Central seat. Poonam Mahajan, daughter of late Pramod Mahajan, won it in 2014 and 2019—with a margin of 1.30 lakh votes last time. The party high command denied her the ticket and fielded Ujjwal Nikam who lost by 16,000 votes.

Another takeaway is that sidelining veteran leaders to accommodate defectors is not a winning strategy. In 2019, Sunita Duggal won Sirsa in Haryana by a margin of 3.10 lakh votes. The BJP denied her the ticket to give it to Ashok Tanwar, who joined the BJP after quitting the Aam Aadmi Party, the Trinamool Congress and the Congress—all in a matter of five years. Tanwar lost by 2.65 lakh votes. There are many, many such instances.

The results in Faizabad and Varanasi and the ineffectiveness of the Hindu-Muslim pitch after the first phase of elections showed how the BJP leadership failed to read the pulse of the people. They didn’t realise that some BJP voters were getting so disillusioned with the party that it lost 49 seats, which it had won by over 50 per cent vote share in 2019.

There has been a whisper campaign about a possible internal sabotage in Uttar Pradesh where the party’s tally almost halved—from 62 in 2014 to 33 in 2024. But the fact is that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had no say in ticket distribution. The BJP high command appointed Baijayant Panda as the party’s election in-charge in UP. He was then asked to contest the Lok Sabha election in Odisha. Panda had to shift his focus to the state. Sunil Bansal, an Amit Shah confidant who does not get along with Yogi, virtually took charge of the UP elections.

What was also surprising was the silence of the BJP’s high command on AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal’s conspiracy theory that CM Yogi would be removed two months after the Lok Sabha elections. Many BJP leaders believe that it might have prompted Yogi fans to recalibrate their voting strategy.

Similarly, in Rajasthan, the party high command decided not to involve former chief minister Vasundhara Raje. The BJP’s tally came down by 10 in the state.

What was surprising was BJP president JP Nadda’s virtual repudiation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with his suggestion that the BJP doesn’t need the ideological patron anymore as the party had become strong. Nadda is not known to say anything without Modi-Shah’s approval. And if he deviated from the given script, the party certainly didn’t try to correct it.

A section of the BJP believes the party received a blow in this election because its Ram temple plank didn’t click. The fact, however, is that there were so many questionable decisions on the part of strategists—denial of tickets, rewarding defectors, undermining Modi’s development plank by resorting to communal rhetoric, and internecine battles to fix mass leaders.

It’s unlikely that PM Modi was a party to many of these decisions. As the BJP’s chief campaigner, he was focused on addressing rallies and responding to whatever suggestions and feedback party strategists gave him. They, not Lord Ram, let him down. Once the government formation exercise is over, PM Modi may want to call Amit Shah for a candid chat to understand why it happened.

DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)