Bankipur Might Be the Opposition’s 1978 Azamgarh Moment as Modi-Shah’s Decline Begins

Emergency haunts the Congress party even today, five decades after it was imposed in 1975. It had felled the colossus Indira Gandhi in the 1977 general elections. Congress was in ruins, demoralised and enervated, as the newly formed Janata Party was itching to dance on its political grave. One by-election dramatically changed the political scenario within a year, splashing the grim canvas with colours of hope. The sitting member of parliament from Azamgarh Ram Naresh Yadav became the chief minister of Janata Party government in 1978, necessitating a by-election in Uttar Pradesh where the Congress could not win even a single seat in the 1977 parliamentary election. Indira Gandhi reluctantly fielded her trusted colleague Mohsina Kidwai who won , giving a fresh lease of life to the Congress. That astonishing victory signalled that the people hadn’t written off the Congress after so severely punishing it for Emergency, motivating the dejected Indira Gandhi to contest the Chikmagalur by-election in Karnataka herself. She was back in parliament and the political boxing arena sooner than anybody had anticipated. By-elections aren’t always irrelevant. They have changed the course of history. Who had imagined V.P. Singh will uproot the Rajiv Gandhi government after leaving the Congress? His stunning victory as the joint-opposition candidate from Allahabad in 1988 by-election scripted that transformation in India’s politics. It was actually the V.P. Singh-led National Front government that created circumstances in which L.K. Advani launched the rath yatra for Ram temple, laying the ground for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s hegemonic control of India’s polity. Also read: Can Modi and Shah Recalibrate After the Youth Uprising or Will They Push for More Centralised Power? The BJP can dismiss the significance of by-election results in Datia in Madhya Pradesh and Bankipur in Bihar at its own peril. Most by-elections are indeed insignificant but political circumstances sometimes transform them into historical milestones. The public verdict in both Datia and Bankipur cannot be insulated from the national political reality even as the third by-election in Manjalpur indicated lack of credible opposition in Gujarat. What’s most shocking, however, is the wild speculation on social media about the absence of Gyanesh Kumar magic in these elections. Many responses suggested that the level-playing field in elections will show how unpopular Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duopoly has become across the country. The BJP lost 53,472 votes in a small assembly constituency, Bankipur, within a span of less than eight months. While the candidates in the fray do influence some voters, loss of 53,472 votes in an assembly election shows a dramatic shift in voter’s thought process. It advertises disillusionment and anger. What changed in this small period? Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP national president Nitin Nabin during the NDA’s ‘Mangal Milan’ meeti