Lok Sabha polls: Modi tsunami has swept away these regional parties

By 3.30pm on Thursday as counting of votes in the Lok Sabha elections progressed, the BJP is leading in 301 seats, fulfilling predictions made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah.

While the Congress appears to have 'improved' on its tally of the 2014 elections and is poised to win at least 50 seats, these regional parties that allied with it appear to have been devastated by the 'Modi tsunami'. While the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have won less than 20 seats in Uttar Pradesh, the combined vote share of these parties have ensured they escape being part of this list.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (Bihar): After winning just four seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the RJD clawed back its position in Bihar politics in the 2015 assembly election, when it became the single-largest party. With RJD patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav being jailed in the Fodder Scam, his son Tejashwi Yadav had spent months cobbling together a coalition with the Congress, HAM(S) and Upendra Kushwaha's RLSP.

At 4pm, the RJD was leading in only two of the 20 seats it contested: Lalu's daughter Misa Bharati was ahead in Pataliputra and Surendra Prasad Yadav was leading in Jehanabad.

The disastrous performance is a far cry from the 2004 election, when the RJD won 22 seats, with Lalu becoming railway minister. With Lalu in jail and Tejashwi facing murmurs of dissent from his brother Tej Pratap, the immediate future for the RJD appears stormy.

Janata Dal Secular (Karnataka): In 2018, the JD(S) had vaulted back into national prominence when it stitched together an alliance with the Congress in the wake of the fractured mandate in the Karnataka assembly polls. The anti-BJP opposition saw the Karnataka result as a ray of hope to unseat Modi.

However, the JD(S) is leading in only one seat—Hassan—where Prajwal Revanna, the grandson of party patriarch and former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda is ahead against his BJP rival by over 1 lakh votes. The JD(S) is trailing in all of the other seven seats it contested in alliance with the Congress. Even Gowda is trailing in Tumkuru against the BJP's G.S. Basavaraj by nearly 20,000 votes. While the JD(S) won only two seats in the 2014 poll, the danger from its sub-par performance this time around is the likely risk of instability to the JD(S)-Congress coalition government.

Nationalist Congress Party (Maharashtra): Twenty years after its formation, the NCP is facing a crisis. After having a national presence, albeit in limited numbers, for years, in Lok Sabha polls 2019, the NCP is leading in four seats in Maharashtra and has won the lone seat in Lakshadweep.

The party had considerable expectations of winning in its 'strongholds' of the sugar belt of Western Maharashtra, but it is facing a tough fight. While Supriya Sule, daughter of NCP patriarch Shard Pawar, is leading in Baramati, his grand-nephew, Parth Pawar, is trailing in Maval.

Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (Jharkhand): The party of Shibu Soren is leading in just one seat, with Vijay Kumar Hansdak ahead in Rajmahal by over 43,000 votes against Hemlal Murmu of the BJP.

Even Shibu Soren is trailing against Sunil Soren of the BJP. The JMM's alliance with the Congress was perceived to be posing a formidable challenge against the BJP-AAJSU. With the BJP and AAJSU leading in 12 of the 14 Lok Sabha seats, the poor performance in the Lok Sabha election is expected to pose questions on the JMM's prospects ahead of the assembly elections due later this year in Jharkhand.