A few things are clear from the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. First, most exit polls were way off the mark regarding their forecasts of the election results and underestimated the strength of the opposition India alliance consisting of the Indian National Congress (INC) and several regional parties. While the India alliance secured 234, the (INC) secured 99 – doubling its tally of 2019. The BJP on its own secured 240 – down over 60 seats from its 2019 tally of 303 -- while the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured 293 seats. In 2014, BJP had won 282 seats.
Second, the results from states like Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan also went against the general belief, that the BJP is invincible in the Hindi belt. In UP, the state which sends the largest number of MPs to parliament, India alliance won 43 seats, with Samajwadi Party (SP) and INC winning 37 and 6 seats respectively. In Rajasthan, the INC won 8 of the 25 seats (in both 2014 and 2019, INC had not won a single seat).
Third, people had written of coalition governments after the BJP had won comfortably securing a majority of its own in 2014 and 2019. While the BJP-led NDA is all set to form government, two regional parties – the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of Andhra Pradesh, with 16 Lok Sabha MPs led by Chief Minister-elect Chandra Babu Naidu and Janata Dal United (JDU) of Bihar, led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, with 12 MPs will play a crucial role in forming the next government.
Third, with the growing domination of the BJP, several commentators had begun to write off regional parties. There is no doubt, that the INC has increased its tallies and improved. Regional allies of the INC, apart from SP – DMK (22) in Tamil Nadu, NCP (9), Shiv Sena (UBT) 8 in Maharashtra and Trinamool Congress (29) in West Bengal have performed exceedingly well.
Even for the NDA, the TDP and JD(U) have performed well. The NDA coalition will be heavily dependent upon both TDP and JD (U) as mentioned earlier. While there is no doubt, that regional parties face numerous challenges, it is important to bear in mind that regional parties make an important contribution to national politics by flagging regional issues and making important contributions to development, not just of states but the country as a whole and economic diplomacy with the rest of the world. The TDP led by Chandrababu Naidu is one such example. As Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh (AP) in the 1990’s, Naidu had converted Hyderabad (now capital of Telangana carved out of the bifurcation of AP) into a major IT Hub. Hyderabad was dubbed as ‘Cyberabad’. Naidu himself was referred to as CEO of Andhra Pradesh.
During his tenure as CM of the newly carved AP (2014-2019), Naidu had tried to attract investors from several East Asian and South-East Asian countries for Amaravati. He had also visited China twice during this tenure as CM (2015-2016). It is not just Naidu, several other CMs, from regional parties, have been pro-active in the growing role of states in foreign policy – or what is called as ‘para-diplomacy’ or constituent diplomacy. This outreach is driven not just by economics, but by people-to-people links – as well as the growing diaspora from various states overseas.
In conclusion, it is important not to get caught in binaries. While regional parties may have their weaknesses, as mentioned earlier, in a diverse country like India, they are extremely important for voicing regional aspirations – which often get confused with parochialism – and on important policy issues. It is also a myth to be dismissive of coalition governments – which in the past have delivered on economic growth.
The author is a policy analyst and faculty member at the Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own and do not reflect those of DNA)
