Membership puzzle for Modi: 7 cr ‘new BJP members’ enrolled but not many voting in elections

BJP became world’s largest party in 2019, claiming to have 18 crore members—64 per cent more than 2015. Election result data doesn’t reflect those numbers.

File photo of PM Modi | PTI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a valiant ‘victory’ day speech last Thursday, asserting that “growing public support” for Bharatiya Janata Party showed rising jan aakrosh or public anger against “nepotism and corruption”. BJP wasn’t in power only in Gujarat, where it registered a historic win, but also in Himachal Pradesh and the Delhi Municipal Corporation—two places where the party was recently unseated from power. Therefore, it was unclear how the verdict of these three elections reflected growing public anger.

As always, the Prime Minister was trying to shield his colleagues from any criticism of their performance. BJP national president J.P. Nadda, who completes his tenure next month, is expected to get an extension. BJP’s defeat in Himachal, Nadda’s home state, where the party witnessed an unprecedented scale of rebellion, might have added a degree of uncertainty to this idea.

But electoral losses don’t necessarily bear on a leader’s political standing in BJP. In 2017, veteran party leader and BJP’s then-chief ministerial candidate in Himachal, Prem Kumar Dhumal, was denied the coveted CM chair after he lost the assembly election. In 2022, Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami lost the assembly poll but was made CM again.

Loyalty matters for BJP

Therefore, loss in his home state may not necessarily determine Nadda’s political future. It’s not accountability but loyalty that matters in BJP—or, for that matter, in any other party today. Nadda’s loyalty to PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah is unquestionable. On Thursday, Modi pounced on the party president’s argument about “less than one per cent difference” between BJP and Congress vote shares in Himachal to say that people wanted to vote for the party.

Modi would know its fallacy, though. The fact is that BJP’s vote share came down by around six percentage points this year—down to 43 per cent from 48.79 per cent in 2017.

As for the historic win in Gujarat, Modi must, in his heart of hearts, feel grateful to Aam Aadmi Party. If not for AAP eating into the anti-incumbency votes, Congress would have got 33 more seats and BJP that much less, bringing it down to 123.

Had Congress contested seriously, the gap could have been narrower. Modi must, therefore, be all the more grateful to Rahul Gandhi.

Long before he detached himself from politics and went on the Bharat Jodo Yatra, he had virtually ensured that the Patidars also detached themselves from Congress. According to party insiders, influential Patidar leader and chairman of Khodaldham Trust, Naresh Patel, had come to Delhi to meet the Congress leader. He had laid out certain conditions for his alignment with Congress. Insiders say that Gandhi made Patel wait for half an hour before showing up. He heard Patel silently, then got up with an ‘ok’ and left. Patel never heard from him again. Weeks later, in October 2022, the Patidar leader called on Modi. The rest is history.

Aside from the contributions of Arvind Kejriwal and Gandhi, BJP’s seventh consecutive victory in the Gujarat assembly elections was worth celebrating. It was a testimony to Modi’s invincibility in the state.

What should, however, be the PM’s big concern, is that crores of BJP’s ‘new members’ don’t seem to be voting for the party in assembly elections.

Solving BJP’s number puzzle

As of 20 August 2019—when BJP’s membership drive concluded—the party had 18 crore members, as announced by then working president J.P. Nadda. It was seven crores more than what the party had in 2015.

In the last week of August that year, when a BJP delegation went to China, they were pleasantly surprised by the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s curiosity about BJP’s membership drive.

In 2015, BJP became the world’s largest party, registering 11 crore members—2.2 crores more than CPC. By August 2019, BJP said it had 18 crore members, an increase of around 64 per cent from its last membership drive.

Given that BJP had secured 22.90 crore votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it was deduced that about 78 per cent of Modi voters had become BJP members.

However, the votes BJP has been getting in assembly polls don’t seem to square with the increase in its membership figures.

Look at the Himachal Pradesh assembly polls, for instance. In the 2017 election, BJP secured 18.46 lakh votes, and in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, its vote share went up to 26.61 lakh. It is down to just 18.14 lakh in the 2022 elections. In Gujarat, BJP got 1.67 crore votes this time—20 lakh more than the 2017 Assembly polls but far less than what a 64 per cent increase in membership nationally should have translated. And these are the two BJP strongholds where its membership drive could produce robust results.

Prima facie, it may look like hair-splitting because there can’t be a uniform increase in membership and voters’ figures in every state. It is possible that the 64 per cent increase in BJP’s members might have come from a much bigger boost in certain states and relatively below-par enrollment in some others.

Let’s, therefore, look at some other BJP-dominated states where more enrolments could be expected. In Haryana, BJP secured 41.25 lakh votes in the 2014 assembly elections. In the 2019 Lok sabha polls—weeks before the second BJP membership drive—73.57 lakh people voted for BJP in Haryana, much more than the overall 64 per cent increase in membership nationally.

In the 2019 Assembly polls, however, BJP’s votes came down to 45.69 lakhs—a drastic fall, that is not in sync with either the increase in membership figures or the Modi voters-BJP members conversion ratio. So, where did the registered BJP members go in Haryana?

BJP voters’ figures in Jharkhand throw up similar questions: 43 lakhs in the 2014 assembly polls, 76 lakhs in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and then 50 lakhs in assembly polls a few months later the same year. BJP’s votes in Delhi raise similar questions—28.90 lakh in 2015 (assembly), 49 lakhs in 2019 (Lok Sabha) and 35.75 lakh in 2020 (assembly). One may argue that people have been voting differently in Lok Sabha and assembly elections. But those who enrol themselves as BJP members are usually expected to vote for the party in all elections.

Analysing vote share in BJP bastions

One can look at a couple of other BJP-dominated states for clarity. In Uttar Pradesh, BJP secured 3.43 crore votes in 2014 (Lok Sabha), 3.44 crore votes in 2017 (assembly), 4.28 crore votes in 2019 (Lok Sabha) and 3.80 crore votes in 2022 (assembly). One would expect that UP will enrol more BJP members than most other states. But there is a difference of only 36 lakhs in the number of voters in the 2017 and 2022 assembly elections. The 64 per cent increase in BJP membership nationally doesn’t get reflected in UP either.

So, where exactly did the BJP have this windfall in the number of members in 2018? Which states? ThePrint looked at BJP’s voter figures in at least a dozen states, and the numbers don’t square up with that 64 per cent increase in membership. They are far, far less.

In Uttarakhand, 23.19 lakh people voted for BJP in the 2017 Assembly elections. In 2022, it stood at 23.84 lakh.

Where have these ‘new’ BJP members gone? One can understand a fall in BJP voters, but those enrolled as ‘members’, including the additions between 2015 and 2019, are expected to vote for BJP. They are obviously playing truant. The only state where an increase in BJP members (nationally) reflected adequately was West Bengal, where there were 55.55 lakh BJP voters in 2016, a number that went up to 2.29 crore in 2021. It’s much more than the said 64 per cent increase in BJP members nationally. But even this steep rise in one state can’t explain the shortfall in BJP’s overall membership increase—by seven crores between 2015 and 2019—and the votes it gets in assembly elections in most states.

One doesn’t have access to state-wise or assembly-wise data of BJP members in 2015 and 2019 to match them with voters’ figures. The party has been secretive about it.

But given reverses and below-par performance in assembly elections in several states, Modi may want to ask Shah, the party’s chief strategist, to match up these numbers. After all, so many ‘members’ of the ‘world’s largest party’, who are supposed to be ideologically committed, can’t be doing the vanishing act in assembly elections! BJP needs these paper tigers to show up and get counted in elections: If they exist, that is.

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

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)