(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)
While the BJP's defeat in the Delhi state election has been total and absolute, it is necessary to put things in perspective. Those who are pretending the battle-lines and possible verdict of the 2019 Lok Sabha election can now almost be predicted are surely getting carried away. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Arvind Kejriwal have certainly raised their profile, but to posit them as the key all-India challenge to the BJP and Narendra Modi in 2019 is premature. It may well happen, but frankly, so may several other alternative scenarios.
In politics as in war, a period of heady conquest and territorial expansion needs to be followed by consolidation. In the case of the BJP, this period of consolidation has been forced upon it by the scale of the loss in Delhi. Even so, if the lessons are learnt, and the gains of the past 15 months are assessed and nurtured, then the party can only benefit. Of course, much will depend on what Narendra Modi, as Prime Minister, and Amit Shah, as party President, do.
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In the near future, the assembly election in Bihar will boil down to a battle between Laloo Yadav and the Yadav-Muslim alliance - with Nitish Kumar fronting for it - and the BJP. This is not going to be an easy election, but the fact remains that the BJP has its best chance ever. A strategic and well thought out campaign, planned over months, since the BJP has a Chief Ministerial candidate in place, is necessary. In Assam, as the recent municipal elections suggest, the social coalition that served the BJP in the Lok Sabha election is holding, and with luck the party could win a majority in the assembly when elections are held there next year.
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If one compares this scenario with November 2013, before the quintet of assembly elections that winter, how is the BJP placed? Then, as now, in key states, primarily Uttar Pradesh, its organisational structure remains weak and bereft of compelling local leaders. Then, as now in Delhi, it is an also-ran with a state unit that is a sorry mess, incapable of winning an assembly election since 1993. Having said that, compared to November 2013, the BJP is in power in many more states and will be running the Union government for the next four years. These are not achievements and assets to be sneezed at.
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The next Delhi BJP leader (whoever the person is) is in his or her late 30s or early 40s. To identify this person and place this generation in charge of an overhauled and contemporary party, one that has enough time to rebuild itself for 2020 without resorting to wildcard entries, are all tasks that await Amit Shah. In 2014-15, he had only a few months to turn around the Delhi unit and he failed. Now, he has a few years.
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All this has told on the government's legislative business, which has been stalled in the Rajya Sabha, and where relations with non-Congress parties such as the AIADMK, the Trinamool Congress and the BJD have not gone as smoothly as was perhaps expected in May 2014. Of course, there is also the likelihood that after Delhi, the opposition will be even more hostile in the Budget Session. Having said that, the long Budget Session is also usually the session where a lot of serious legislation is done.
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