Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh just came to an end along with the year 2022. With 2023 at our doorstep, politicos and analysts are gearing up for the elections in the coming year, which will set the stage for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Some key Assembly elections are due in 2023. Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana along with the Northeast states — Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram. The Centre might also consider announcing elections in Jammu and Kashmir — the first one since Article 370 was abrogated and the special status of the region was scrapped.
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While BJP will want to regain its hold on most of the states, it is a fight for survival for the Congress. After winning the Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections in December 2022, it now holds power in three states — Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh. Two of these three will be going to polls in 2023.
Here is what to expect from the major Assembly elections due in 2023.
Rajasthan
In the previous Assembly elections in December 2018, Congress wrested power from the Vasundhara Raje-led BJP government, becoming the single largest party with 100 seats in the 200-seat assembly — short of a majority by 1 seat. The BJP, on the other hand, fared far worse than the previous election, securing only 73 seats. It had secured an absolute majority of 163 seats in the 2013 Assembly elections.
It was a big win for the Congress which was (and is still) trying to establish its footprint in the Assemblies before setting its goal of regaining the Lok Sabha majority. Ashok Gehlot became the Chief Minister in Rajasthan.
In 2023, there will be a direct fight between the BJP and the Congress in Rajasthan. Congress would want to fight hard for its survival. However, the rift between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot is likely to play a role as it has strengthened the negative perception problem that Congress has been battling about the in-fighting.
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Chhattisgarh
Again, Congress got a landslide victory in the Chhattisgarh Assembly elections in 2013, winning 68 seats against the ruling BJP’s 15 seats in the 90-member Assembly. This was a huge win, considering the grand old party unseated and dethroned the state’s three-time Chief Minister and BJP leader Raman Singh. The election results also were a clear departure from the Opinion and Exit polls which gave the BJP a majority or predicted a neck-and-neck fight at best.
As much as winning Chhattisgarh was a massive jump for the Congress, losing power in the state was a blow for the BJP. The Congress had never won an election in Chhattisgarh since it was formed — Ajit Jogi was chosen by the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi as the Chief Minister when the state was formed on November 1, 2000.
The first election was held in 2003 when the BJP won and had been winning every election since then until 2018, with Raman Singh holding the fort as the Chief Minister for 15 years.
This time, BJP would not be sparing any stone unturned to unseat the Congress government in the state. The optics matter ahead of 2024 and Chhattisgarh presents a massive opportunity for that.
Madhya Pradesh
Now, this is a contest every political watcher and analyst would be waiting for with bated breath. The last elections in 2013 led to a hung assembly, with the Congress emerging as the single largest party and the BJP winning the popular vote. Congress won 114 seats in the 230-member Assembly and formed the government with the support of Samajwadi Party’s one MLA, Bahujan Samaj Party’s 2 MLAs and 4 Independent MLAs. Kamal Nath took charge as the Chief Minister on December 17, 2018.
However, 22 sitting MLAs from the Congress, loyal to Jyotiraditya Scindia, resigned from the party along with Scindia and joined the BJP. this led to the 2020 Madhya Pradesh political crisis, with the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan returning as the CM again on March 23, 2020.
The BJP will want to maintain the gains that it made with Jyotiraditya Scindia’s defection from the Congress in the 2023 Assembly elections, and win with an absolute majority in the state.
Karnataka
This was another hung Assembly after the 2018 elections when no political party got a majority. Incumbent Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa was sworn in as Chief Minister but he had to resign after not being able to manage the majority.
The Congress-JD(S) coalition formed the cabinet with HD Kumarasamy as Chief minister. However, 14 months later, 16 MLAs from the ruling coalition resigned within two days and two independent MLAs switched their support to BJP.
The coalition lost the majority in the 224-seat Assembly, and the opposition BJP was now 107-member strong. After three weeks of turmoil, HD Kumarasamy resigned after losing the trust vote on July 23, 2019, and resigned. On July 26, 2019, Yeddiyurapa took oath as the Chief Minister of Karnataka once again. The internal shuffle in the BJP, however, led to Basavaraj Bommai being sworn in as the Chief Minister on July 27, 2021.
Karnataka is the BJP’s gateway to South India. The saffron party will do all that it can to maintain its popularity and power in the state. A weak opposition comes as an added asset.
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Telangana
Chief Minister KCR triumphed in the 2018 assembly election, bagging 88 of the 119 seats K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) has wielded unbridled power since Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh. His Telangana Rashtra Samithi or TRS (now called the Bharatha Rashtra Samithi, or BRS) has to come to power for a third consecutive term in the 2023 Assembly polls. Along with this, KCR-led BRS also has to stem the BJP juggernaut and unseat the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as the primary opposition at the Centre in 2024 — as he has vowed to do. KCR has been on a no-holds-barred campaign against the PM Narendra Modi-led BJP at the state and Centre levels.
The saffron party on the other hand will want to make an in-roads into Telangana to gain power in another state in the south. How far can saffron overrule TRS or BRS’s pink is a question that will be answered in the elections next year.
