Hindustan Times

Dhrubo Jyoti

Dipankar Ghose

These five Indians will be remembered for their role in this era.

Modi, Shah, Rahul Gandhi: 5 key leaders

<h2 style="text-align:center;">Narendra Modi</h2><p>If there is one man that defines both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and the time just before, between and after those years, it is Narendra Modi. Announced as the BJP’s clear prime ministerial candidate even before the election dates were announced, he represented a generational shift in the Bharatiya Jaanata Party.</p><p>With the dawn of the age of Modi, the party moved away from the era of Atal Behari Vajpayee, LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi.</p>

<p>The results of the shift were unprecedented. The BJP won 282 of 545 seats, the first time it had ever won a full majority in a national election. Five years later, there was no question that Modi was the face of the BJP at all levels. Facing five years of anti-incumbency, and a Congress campaign built on alleged irregularities in the Rafale fighter jets deal, Modi fought on muscular nationalism, and a country buoyed by an aggressive Indian response to the Pulwama terror attack in Kashmir in February 2019 backed him wholly, in April-May.</p><p>The BJP ended the 2019 election with a larger majority than in 2014, winning 303 of 545 seats.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Amit Shah</h2><p>Until 2014, he was a powerful figure in Gujarat. He had not quite struck the national consciousness. But as the BJP headed into a national election that sought to end 10 years of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s dominance at the Centre, it was clear that, as always, the path to New Delhi would pass through Uttar Pradesh.</p><p>With Modi as the prime ministerial face, Shah was entrusted with devising a campaign for UP. He delivered. The BJP won 71 of 80 seats, winning in regions such as western Uttar Pradesh, which had recently seen riots in Muzaffarnagar.</p>

<p>Once Shah had delivered on the biggest stage in the country, when it comes to the national polls, there was no stopping him. He took over as BJP president in 2014, led the party to wins in state after state, enlarging its footprint in new regions such as the north-east.</p><p>By 2019, he was the second face associated with the BJP’s dominance, after Modi’s. He was appointed union home minister in May that year.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Rahul Gandhi</h2><p>The Congress headed into the 2014 Lok Sabha election with several clouds hanging over it. There were the allegations of corruption that had plagued UPA 2; anti-corruption protests that had launched a political entity, the Aam Aadmi Party; and a decade of anti-incumbency to boot. Amid it all, though the Congress officially stated that it did not have a prime ministerial face, it was clear that Rahul Gandhi was being positioned as its leader.</p><p>Yet, Gandhi could not inspire, and the Congress collapsed at the polls to end up at a record low, winning only 44 of 545 seats.</p>

<p>Five years later, the Congress seemed to be in a better place, in the run-up to the 2019 election. It was winning big at the state level; had either wrested away or retained vital states such as Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, by late-2018.</p><p>Gandhi led the charge again. But the Congress failed to find its feet in a campaign that seemed to have no core. The BJP’s nationalism pitch, particularly in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack, left the Congress with a tally that rose, insignificantly, from 44 to 52.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Mamata Banerjee</h2><p>Thirteen years after she broke away from the Congress, Mamata Banerjee broke the stranglehold of the Left on West Bengal, winning Assembly elections there after 34 years of uninterrupted governance by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The 2014 elections were therefore crucial for West Bengal. With the state’s 40 Parliamentary seats, the results of the national election would either cement Banerjee’s position as the new centre of power in the east, or herald a possible return for the CPI(M). As it turned out, Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) won 34 of 40 seats, earning the party a strong voice in parliament, and decimating, perhaps irreversibly, the CPI(M).</p><p>In 2019, voting patterns in West Bengal were among the most closely watched. It helps to remember that West Bengal is the state with the third-largest number of seats in the Lok Sabha (42; exceeded only by Maharashtra’s 48 and Uttar Pradesh’s 80).</p>

<p>TMC had won the 2016 state election convincingly, but faced an unprecedented BJP campaign in the state in 2019. Eventually, Banerjee underperformed, perhaps misreading the mood of her state, the prime minister’s popularity, or both. The BJP won a once-unthinkable 18 of the 42 seats, narrowly behind the TMC’s 22, setting up a political rivalry that has since dominated the state’s politics.</p><p>Still, Banerjee’s rise to power foreshadowed the beginning of that other major pole in national politics, in the Modi era: the return of the regional party.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Nitish Kumar</h2><p>On the list of states with the most Lok Sabha seats, Bihar comes in at #4. Its 40 seats can turn a national election, and at the heart of this vital state and its politics, sits Nitish Kumar.</p><p>In 2013, Kumar provided one of the most intriguing subplots of the coming polls; he stepped out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) after Modi was declared its prime ministerial candidate, articulating concerns about communalism and sectarianism.</p><p>Eventually, this had little effect in Bihar. His Janata Dal (United) fought alone and won two seats; the NDA swept the state, winning 31.</p>

<p>A year later, Kumar had returned to the fold. In 2019, JD(U) was an active participant in the BJP’s campaign to consolidate Bihar. The combination of the BJP, JD(U) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party proved impregnable.</p><p>The NDA won 39 of 40 seats in a state fragmented by caste, reducing the Congress to one, and foe-turned-friend-turned-foe-turned-friend Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal to zero. Kumar’s maverick moves — he is now out of the NDA again — continue to shape Indian politics, just not always as he’d like them to.</p>