Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 7

Introduction: What Does Verdict 2019 Tell Us?
How Do We Read This Mandate?
Sanjay Kumar
Indian Politics & Policy • Vol. 3, No. 1 • Spring 2020
Professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi
During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections
held in India, the Bhartiya
Janata Party (BJP) registered
a stunning victory, winning 303 of the
total 543 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP-led
National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
ended up winning 353 Lok Sabha seats.
It is important to note that during the
2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP
managed to increase its vote share to
37.5 percent from its previous best of
31 percent votes in 2014. On the other
hand, the Indian National Congress
(Congress) managed to wINdin only
fifty-two seats and the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) 1 tally reached
ninety-one Lok Sabha seats. There was
hardly any increase in the vote share
of Congress compared to the 2014 Lok
Sabha 2 elections. Certainly, the gains
for the BJP came mainly at the cost of
regional parties. The combined tally of
seats and vote share of all regional parties
put together declined in 2019 compared
to their performance in 2014. The
losses for regional parties came mainly
from Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar,
where the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 3
and Samajwadi Party (SP) 4 alliance in
UP and the RJD-led alliance in Bihar
performed miserably. In UP, the SP-BSP
alliance managed to win only fifteen
seats, of which ten were won by the BSP
and only five were won by the SP. In Bihar,
of all the parties that were part of
Mahagathbandan, only Congress candidate
Dr. Mohammad Jawed managed
to win the Kishanganj Lok Sabha seat.
The election of 2019 indicates
that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 5
not only managed to retain its base
of support that it built in 2014, but it
also expanded it both geographically
and socially. It managed to win seats
in states where previously it had not
performed well. It also managed to get
more votes among social communities
that had not voted for it in earlier elections.
Congress 6 did not improve on its
performance in 2014, but it is important
to note that neither its votes declined
nor its tally of seats went down.
The BJP enhanced its performance
from 2014 largely at the cost of regional
parties. Some regional parties managed
to hold onto their base of support, but
few others retained the kind of support
they held in 2014. In states like Bihar,
Jharkhand, UP, Karnataka, and Maharashtra,
regional parties performed
badly in spite of many of them having
formed an anti-BJP alliance to avoid
splitting the anti-BJP votes in their
state. The BJP’s gain in vote share and
seats, largely at the expense of regional
parties in many states, begins a new de-
3
doi: 10.18278/inpp.3.1.2