The year 2025 is likely to be a lean one in national politics, so to speak. The Delhi assembly election in a few weeks from now will dominate the headlines for a couple of months, of course. After all, it will test the durability of the Brand Arvind Kejriwal in terms of how much it has or hasn’t rusted in a decade of power. For the Bharatiya Janata Party, it’s an opportunity to revalidate Brand Modi, which showed signs of rusting in the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the Jharkhand assembly election. The fact, however, is that we are talking about just a city-state. The results won’t really make much difference to national politics, even though a fourth term as CM for Kejriwal could revive the ‘Congress-hataao’ slogan in the INDIA bloc.
The only other assembly election in 2025 is in October-November in Bihar. The BJP is looking reconciled to giving Nitish Kumar another term as the CM if the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) wins. Even if Tejaswi Yadav springs a pleasant surprise for the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led alliance, the impact won’t be felt much beyond Bihar.
So, 2025 is essentially about emerging trends, which would have a bearing on national politics in subsequent years.
Uttar Pradesh politics
Watch Uttar Pradesh closely. Having been blamed, albeit unfairly, for the BJP’s setback in the Lok Sabha polls, CM Yogi Adityanath redeemed himself in the Assembly bypolls. That hasn’t silenced the NDA snipers. Just think of Minister Ashish Patel virtually daring Yogi to remove him. When his wife, Union Minister Anupriya Patel from the Apna Dal, was taking potshots at the Yogi government for not implementing reservation for the other backward classes (OBCs) in government recruitments, many were wondering why the BJP high command was letting her do it. After all, the Apna Dal is only hanging on to the BJP’s coattails in UP, given its marginal and waning influence over the Kurmis.
Why was the BJP high command allowing her to take public digs at the UP government led by someone who is seen as a potential successor of Prime Minister Narendra Modi? Then, her husband, Ashish, flanked by her in a press conference, accused UP director of information, Shishir Singh, of planting stories against him. He also alleged Amitabh Yash-led Special Task Force of conspiring against him.
Both Singh and Yash are known to be Yogi’s confidantes and everybody in UP could see that the actual target was the CM. Ashish Patel had a meeting with Yogi and then he went to meet BJP president JP Nadda in New Delhi. He launched a fresh salvo right after his return from Delhi, this time targeting Mrityunjay Kumar, Yogi’s media advisor and confidant.
No CM would allow a minister to humiliate him like this publicly. But Yogi can’t sack him because of the party high command. He can’t control his ministers and bureaucrats who enjoy Delhi’s blessings. So, how is Yogi going to navigate this tricky situation in 2025? Let’s see.
Case of two CMs
Within a month after returning as the Maharashtra CM, Devendra Fadnavis is drawing a lot of curiosity. He has had his quota of struggles, accepting his demotion to deputy CM and then waiting for weeks to regain the well-deserved CM’s chair after the elections. His alliance partners—Eknath Shinde of the Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)—have been negotiating directly with the party high command in New Delhi. In a move that has drawn praise even from his political rivals, and curiously so, Fadnavis has made a loud statement with his daylong visit to the Naxal den of Gadchiroli, praising the state police for “almost” eradicating the menace in the district.
The message didn’t go unnoticed. It’s Fadnavis who has broken the back of Naxals in Maharashtra, even as Union Home Minister Amit Shah vows to eliminate Naxalism by 2026.
How much autonomy is Fadnavis planning to assert is a question we should keep our fingers crossed about.
We saw Manipur CM Biren Singh apologising for what has happened in the state under his watch over the past 20 months. It made national headlines. Now think of his plight on Saturday as he was left out of the unified command meeting that was presided over by the newly appointed Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla, and attended by the state’s security advisor, the director general of police and senior security officials to review security. Bhalla reportedly instructed the use of the National Security Act against the troublemakers.
You can’t blame Biren Singh, a democratically elected CM, if he feels humiliated. He deserves to be a punching bag for what he has done to Manipur. Even if he wants to throw in the towel, Amit Shah may not agree. After all, Singh’s continuance as the CM does, to an extent, shield Delhi from criticism. Will Delhi let him go in 2025? For once, a BJP CM knows how it feels when the Raj Bhawan starts running his state.
Also read: CPI-M is damaging Kerala with its petty politics. God’s own country to ‘mini-Pakistan’
The Left’s gambit
Keep a close tab on the happenings in other states. The year 2025 may not be as politically lean, after all. For the purpose of this week’s column, however, I find Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s latest political gambit quite interesting— in terms of how the sole Communist CM is using Sanatan Dharma to revive his sagging political fortune.
Speaking at a function last week, he said that there was an organised effort to establish Sree Narayana Guru as the exponent and proponent of the Sanatan Dharma but he was an ascetic who “uprooted that dharma”. “What does Sanatan Dharma mean? It’s nothing but Varnashrama…It follows the chaturvarna propagating hereditary vocation…How can the Guru who proclaimed that ‘man has only one caste, one religion, and one God’ be an exponent of Sanatan Dharma? What Sanatan Hindutva seeks is the restoration of the old Brahmanical monarchy—and that it is allergic to democracy,” said Vijayan.
On the face of it, Vijayan seemed to be addressing the Ezhavas who revere Sree Narayana Guru. He can’t afford to let the BJP appropriate the venerated saint and social reformer. Ezhavas are estimated to constitute around one-fourth of Kerala’s population and have been traditionally aligned with the Left. The BJP has, however, been gaining ground among the Ezhavas.
According to the CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey in the 2021 assembly elections, 23 per cent of Ezhavas voted for the NDA—up from 18 per cent in 2016. According to the post-poll survey in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, 32 per cent of the Ezhavas voted for the NDA.
Even among the Nairs, an influential upper-caste Hindu community, the BJP has been making great inroads as per the CSDS-Lokniti post-poll surveys. Nairs voters for the BJP went up from 27 percent in the 2021 assembly elections to 45 per cent in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In a state where Muslims and Christians constitute around 45 per cent of the population, signs of Nairs and Ezhavas (together constituting around 38 per cent of the population) swinging toward the BJP must give jitters to both the LDF and the UDF, especially the Vijayan-led front as a majority of Muslims and Christians have been with the Congress.
The Left’s hopes from a possible Christian-Muslim rift—over alleged ‘love jihad’ cases—were dashed in the Lok Sabha polls. Only 5 per cent of Christians voted for the BJP. To woo the Muslims, the Left’s poll pitch was around the Citizenship Amendment Act but that didn’t work. The controversies over CPI(M) leader EP Jayarajan’s meeting with BJP leader Prakash Javadekar and Additional DGP Ajith Kumar’s meeting with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale in the run-up to the elections continue to haunt the Left.
Facing strong anti-incumbency, with authoritarianism becoming the hallmark of his governance and losing support among both the minorities and the Hindu communities, what does Vijayan gain from bashing Sanatan Dharma? One doesn’t know if it would arrest or reverse the slide in the Left’s Ezhavas’ vote bank. The Nairs—or, for that matter, Dalits and non-Ezhava OBCs who strongly backed the Left in 2021—are unlikely to be impressed with his Sanatan gambit either. If he is seeking to mollify and woo the minorities by pitching the bulwark against the BJP, it may be too little, too late.
As it is, the BJP is far from being a challenger for power in Kerala. The BJP surprised everyone by opening its account in Kerala in the last Lok Sabha election. It has seen a steady growth over the last three parliamentary elections—10.33 per cent in 2014; 13 per cent in 2019; and, 16.68 per cent in 2024. Its vote shares in the last three Assembly elections don’t make it a big threat as of now: 6.03 per cent in 2011; 10.6 per cent in 2016; and, 11.30 per cent in 2021. These figures assume more significance in terms of how the BJP can queer the pitch for the LDF or the UDF.
Fifteen months ahead of the next Assembly election, the Left seems to have more reasons to worry. That explains the Kerala CM’s desperation and Sanatan gambit. Since 1967, the Left has been in power in either Kerala, West Bengal or/and Tripura. If he doesn’t deliver in the 2026 Assembly election, the Left will be out of power in every single state in India for the first time in six decades. And this is the last thing Pinarayi Vijayan, 79, would like to be known for in history books.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
Congress is gonna to replace li left in next election and BJP will also emerge
Time for this gadhha to out