 Hello, and welcome to NewsClick. We have with us today senior journalist and old friend of NewsClick, Seema Mustafa. Welcome Seema. Our topic today is the recent elections to state assemblies in five states. And I'll start by asking Seema, what do you think has been the overall impact of these elections? Well, you know, before the elections, let's go back one step back and see that before the elections, what were we expecting? We were expecting the Congress to win in Punjab, to form the government in Uttarakhand, to get Goa back and then to form the government in UP, which everybody was predicting, would have a hung assembly and probably the Samajwadi Congress factor. So you had the Congress everywhere. And then after the vote, you don't have the Congress anywhere. That shows how badly the Congress estimated itself, its own prospects, which and the media overestimated the Congress. But more important and more dangerous is the fact or rather the inability of the Congress to understand where it is now on the ground in even simpler states like Punjab or even Goa. So we are in a position where the electorate all across has given an absolute kick in the face to the UP ruling party, which is the main party, which is the Congress. And has also told the BJP that it doesn't repose face in the BJP because the BJP has been very badly in UP and it was hoping to do a little better than it has in Punjab. But it has lost seats in Punjab. Yes, it has lost seats in Punjab and it has lost seats or it has lost vote percentages in UP. So it's not in a very healthy position. So the two so-called nationalist parties are really been shown the door. Let's look at these states one by one and let's look at UP first. Did you think that the election results in UP were along expected lines or were you surprised? I hate to say it but I wasn't surprised because I had written this, Ragu. I had said that the Congress will not cross 35 seats and that the Samajwadi will get anything 180 plus. And 180 if you cross then it can become 200, 210, we all know that. This was because you know after touring UP, which is a state which one does know having also contested, I didn't see the Congress vote on the ground and I didn't see the BJP vote on the ground. In fact the BJP barely existed and the Congress people were talking about a little bit because of Rahul Gandhi's high voltage campaign but at the same time they were tempering that answer by saying that they're not going to vote for the Congress because where is the Congress or the anger that they have with the Congress. So there was no vote for the party and the other thing that was very visible was that the vote which was the Muslim and the Brahmin vote that had added itself on the Dalit vote for the BSP was running away from the BSP. Let me ask another sort of related question, till Mayawati's election last time, UP had shown this split vote with all the parties getting in the low hundreds, nobody able to independently form government on its own. Mayawati's election broke that pattern, gave her a decisive mandate and correspondingly this time when the electorate wanted to throw her out, the electorate obviously chose to give Mulan Singh an equally large mandate. Given this phenomenon of large single party mandates in UP, is that not also contributing to the fact that the other bit players, Congress, the BJP are not likely to get the kind of 80s and 90s that people were used to earlier? Yes absolutely, that is absolutely that because somewhere the electorate has made up its mind that for the moment they are going to keep with the regional parties. And I think while the Muslims and the Brahmins were angry that the BSP did not do anything for them, they were also aware about the fact that the BSP did quite a bit for its own vote bank which is the Jattos and the Dalits. And there is very visibly in UP a sense of empowerment because you know if you go into the backwaters but where the Dalits couldn't even vote before, I was really surprised that in the market square literally a whole bunch came up while we were talking to the Jats to say no no, she has done so much for us. Now this was an assertion you could have never heard from the Jattos community a while back. So I think the Muslims have now moved in that manner to Samajwadi that you do it for us now that we have given you the mandate. So in a sense part of the miscalculation of Congress or BJP on the one hand and large sections of the media on the other that all of them would get 80s and 90s and so on is a misreading of the mood of the electorate in UP which is clearly since the Mayawati election gone into a bipolar mode if you like. Yes and I think it's a misreading and wishful thinking. The media wants either the BJP to win or the Congress to win. And neither was going to happen. And neither was going to happen. The media wants a two-party system in this country. It doesn't like a federal structure for some reason because of the corporate complexion of the media today. And they don't want to recognize that regional parties have a certain cloud and do address some of the aspirations which these national parties have lost touch with. And how did you read the Punjab elections? Because there was again widespread expectation that Punjab would continue to follow the switching of parties at each election. But that didn't happen this time. The anti-encompassion trend in Punjab didn't seem to weigh with the electorate. I think there are many reasons and one of the reasons of course the Congress itself. The Congress inability to first decide who will be its chief minister candidate. So you had a period of the election where Amrinda Singh the main guy was sulking and then midway into the election they said alright you are going to be the chief minister so he came out to etc plus there are too many factions too many individuals are not getting along together. The Akalis were little cleverer they realized that they were on a back footing they realized the people were angry that they haven't fulfilled a lot of promises. So they did one thing which is rather interesting they for the first time I think this was that they extended their score and they got out of this whole pan-thick framework and they gave tickets to about 10 or 11 non Akali or non Sikhs. Now that was quite interesting because they are being forced to some levels of an inclusive kind of politics to stay afloat. So I think their strategy was. Pay dividends whereas the Congress had no strategy and the Uttarakhand elections of course again there people again expected that the BJP would lose partly because of the switching of parties in successive elections and also because of the problems they had in their previous administration with the corruption and the misgovernance charges. How do you read the Uttarakhand? They did the same thing there who they first played around with Andy Tiwari who whether you like it or not whether he's good or bad he still is a leader and recognized leader the only leader that the Congress really has over there first they got tried to marginalize him then they brought him back in then they didn't give clear signals to Harish Ravath or this other chapter they've got Bahugna. So there was this total lot of factions working it wasn't a united team you see the and now you can see the play out you know there's they've got a chief minister who nobody's supporting in the Congress. So let's see what happens to Uttarakhand whether the government stays or doesn't stay but I think this over reliance on this Nehru Gandhi you know this whole dynastic polity where you put all your eggs in one basket which is Sonia Gandhi Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi is where the Congress feels that we can do whatever we want we can break ourselves into little bits but eventually when the family moves we'll get the votes now UP has shown it doesn't happen. Let's take an overview of the elections as a whole how do you see this impacting on UP A2 going forward there's already talk of mid-term poll there's a talk of incipient third fronts and so on how do you see this unfolding well at the moment I think this third front is again a media cannot to try and you know break any such grouping just in case anybody is thinking about it because frankly right now it doesn't exist none of the regional parties are in a mode to really think they all consolidating what they have got and but the problem is coming for the Congress from within the UPA you have this Mamta Banerjee who suddenly sends blood and since she's a little crazy anyway a crazy politician she is now has a field to really air all her characteristics which is keeping the Congress on its feet on very irrelevant and very stupid issues I mean I could have understood that the issues were important but they're not and then you have the Congress trying to make up with the Samajwadi party discussing a cabinet berth for Mulan Singh at the center trying to make sure that Akhilesh Yadav works along with it right now the Samajwadi party to be understand it is in the mood to govern they want money from the center and so they're not going to rock any boat they're going to for at least one and a half years before the elections they are going to work with the Congress as much as they can we all know that the electorate in India has now learned to respond differently in state elections and in national elections the days of looking at the Indian electorate as immature and so on I think long past but how do you see the present state assembly elections which have just taken place reflecting in the Lok Sabha to come do you see this as indicative of a trend for the future in the Lok Sabha or do you see the Lok Sabha elections responding differently well I think you know the way the voting has happened this time let's take UP because it's the largest state and you can understand in two years down the line unless the Congress really pulls up its socks and gives an entirely different image the victory of the Samajwadi is going to be reflected in the number of MPs it gets in the Lok Sabha there is this certain disillusionment with the Congress which Rahul Gandhi could not break and Priyanka Gandhi lost eight of the ten seats in Rai Bireli and Amethi so clearly all these factors are not working you know so and another thing that has to be understood is the way it is amazing I've never seen this before because there was no BJP in UP and there was no fear in the Muslim vote that there would be a BJP so everybody was saying that because there's no fear the Muslim will get divided amongst the Congress amongst all the parties it didn't happen they just there was like a lightning sort of a message a grapevine that buzzed through UP and the whole thing was like a cascade towards the Samajwadi and people say oh butler house you know that encounter death etc is limited to Azamgarh it's not it does exist all over it does you see everybody is looking at development and progress we all say that but they're looking at development and progress through their own prisms of security of empowerment of justice and then development and progress because the voter knows that you can't have development and progress in a vacuum that Rahul Gandhi was trying to create that had no link with his life on the ground so while the electorate has gone for decisive verdicts in most cases barring Uttarakhand which is marginal otherwise the electorate has gone one way or the other and voted in a government decisively in the States that has not happened at the center for several elections now so do you see a mood in the electorate towards some form of decisive verdict in the Lok Sabha or do we expect a continuation of the current slightly indecisive mandate I think it will continue to be hung because if you don't say that then one would be going into that argument which says that the electorate will vote either BJP or Congress and that's not going to happen because the electorate has not accepted the two-party system and because it hasn't and because the regional parties are regional and not spread all over India they will get reflected in parliament so it will remain hung and we'll still again see coalitions emerging now what kind of coalitions these are will depend I think much closer to the election not right now thank you Seema for reading the tea leaves thank you thanks