New Delhi
The Modi Government’s sustained mega tribal outreach notwithstanding, the BJP could neither better its 2019 performance nor match it. It ended up with a loss of half-a-dozen Lok Sabha seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes.
In all, Lok Sabha has 47 ST reserved seats. In 2019, of the total numbers, the BJP had 31 seats, the Congress four and a number of smaller parties had one seat each of the remaining tally.
In 2024, the BJP won 25 ST seats, six seats less than in 2019 while the Congress increased its tally to 13 seats, nine more than the last time round. Congress ally JMM bagged three seats riding probably on tribal sentiments against the arrest of former CM Hemant Soren.
It was in Jharkhand that the BJP faced its biggest reverses with the I.N.D.I.A allies JMM and Congress trumping it in on all the five ST seats, including that of Khunti where Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda lost by nearly 1.50 lakh votes to his Congress rival Kalicharan Munda. In fact, such has been the BJP’s decimation in Jharkhand that four of its five candidates were defeated by more than 1 lakh votes.
In Karnataka, there was no change of fortunes for the BJP. It had drawn a blank on all the 15 ST Assembly seats in elections last year. It met the same fate in the Lok Sabha polls now as both the tribal seats of Raichur and Bellary went the Congress way.
Tribals in four BJP-ruled States, however, reposed faith in the party. The BJP retained all the 6 ST seats in MP and the 4 seats each in Chhattisgarh and Modi’s home State Gujarat. The lone ST seat from Tripura too was bagged by the BJP. Rajasthan and Maharashtra were an exception though. In Rajasthan, the ruling BJP had all the 3 tribal Lok Sabha seats in 2019 but now has to share the honours with Congress and the Bharat Adivasi Party. In Maharashtra, where the Congress-NCP (Sharad Pawar)-Shiv Sena (UBT) combine got the better of the ruling BJP-led alliance, the party could win just one ST seat compared to three in 2019.
Odisha provided much succour to the BJP which faced major electoral reverses elsewhere, especially in Uttar Pradesh, this time. The BJP, which has wrested the eastern State from the long-serving BJD’s Naveen Patnaik, also saw the tribals helping it win four of the five Lok Sabha seats from the State.
In Meitei-majority strife-torn Manipur, tribals voted against the BJP making it lose both the Lok Sabha seats from the State including the Outer Manipur ST seat. The Congress, expectedly, benefitted.
