The assembly election results of the three states, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are the indicator of which way the political winds are blowing. Looking at the results of assembly election we can see a few clear trends emerging. Like, Congress is on the upswing in rural India, however, BJP has not been completely wiped out from rural areas, except in Chhattisgarh.
Another point to be noted is Congress is once again making inroads into the erstwhile impregnable BJP wall of saffron in urban areas and with the middle classes. After a famous victory in Uttar Pradesh soon after demonetisation, the cumulative labour pains over GST and lack of tangible benefits from demonetisation are now coming home to roost. Urban Chhattisgarh saw a complete BJP rout.
Yogi Adityanath’s reach out to Dalits also seems to have gone wrong with his controversial remark that Ramayana’s Hanuman was a Dalit. Because BJP has been able to retain just 32 SC seats out of total 78 whereas Congress has gone up to 41 SC seats from just 5 in 2013.
Though we cannot extrapolate state election victories to direct Lok Sabha triumphs these polls do set the wider political tone and atmosphere.