One lesson that can be inferred from last week's by-elections to the Lok Sabha and some state assemblies is that the political situation that threw up a hung Parliament in 1996 has not changed a wee bit. Such an inference is possible despite the fact that local issues, rather than national issues, influenced the voters. This means that if the nation goes in for general elections now, there is no certainty that a single party will get an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. In other words, no political party has made any significant progress since the last general election.

Even the BJP, which performed better, owes its victory to certain fortuitous circumstances and strategic alliance than to an upsurge in its popularity. The BJP's success in East Delhi was mainly on account of the vertical split in the Congress votes. However, in Farrukhabad, it was the alliance that it forged with the Bahujan Samaj Party that stood the BJP in good stead. The large margin with which the party retained the Assembly seat shows that the BJP-BSP alliance is almost unassailable in Uttar Pradesh. While this will strengthen the case for continuing the BJP's tie-up with the BSP, it will also strike at the root of the party's ambition to rule on its own in the most populous State.

The ruling parties in Karnataka, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh have reason to be worried about the success the principal opposition parties have achieved in these States. The Congress victory in Molakalamaru conforms to the trend that began when the seat H.D. Deve Gowda vacated was wrested by the Congress. The ruling Janata Dal can only ill afford to lose Karnataka, particularly when its regime in Bihar is tottering. The reduced margin of victory of the Left Front in Ernakulam can be attributed to the voters' growing disenchantment with the Nayanar Ministry. The peculiar role played by the BJP also helped the LDF. Ordinarily, the BJP's committed votes should have gone to the Congress-led UDF, when the party refused to field its own candidate for inexplicable reasons. Given the extent of polarisation in the State, the extra votes from the BJP should have tilted the balance in favour of the UDF. However, such calculations did not take into account the fact that the UDF's gain was offset by the loss of the Muslim votes, which went in favour of the LDF, because of the propaganda about the unholy Congress-BJP alliance.

The drubbing the Congress received in M.P. and Quila Raipur in Punjab shows that it has a long way to go before it can regain its position as the pre-eminent political party. One of the ostensible reasons for the Congress' withdrawal of support to the Deve Gowda Ministry was the UF fielding candidates against it in Punjab but the unheard of alliance it forged with the CPI(M) in Quila Raipur did not improve its position, either. Though the UF has nothing to boast of save retaining the Aska seat thanks to the sympathy factor that helped Biju Patnaik's son to win, the ultimate beneficiary will, however, be the 14-party conglomerate. After all, the unique selling proposition of the UF is that there is no alternative to it because of the fractured nature of the vote.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.