Despite the Vyapam cash-for-jobs scam that has roiled Madhya Pradesh, the Bhartiya Janata Party has swept every election in the state over the last two years. It won the polls to the state assembly in November 2013, the Lok Sabha in May 2014 and several civic bodies since November 2014. But the ruling party has never gloated over the main opposition Congress as much as it did on Sunday, when it won a relatively insignificant victory in eight out of 10 municipal bodies.

The BJP already controls nearly 75% of Madhya Pradesh’s 377 urban local bodies. Its victories on the weekend in elections for the Ujjain and Morena corporations, two municipalities and four Nagar Panchayats did not increase the party's influence in any meaningful way. Instead, the dancing and ebullient speeches at the BJP state headquarters in Bhopal seemed to be a valve for the party to release its pent-up annoyance with the media and the Congress, which have relentlessly highlighted the Vyapam scam.

Since 2013, more than 2,000 people have been arrested for their association with a racket involving the manipulation of tests for jobs and education institutions conducted by the Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal, or Vyapam, the state body in charge of professional examinations and recruitment. The outrage over Vyapam reached a peak in July with reports of more than 40 mysterious deaths of people accused in the scandal and of witnesses in the case. The public anger forced state Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to agree to cooperate with the Central Burea of Investigation inquiry into the case ordered by the Supreme Court on July 9.

Chouhan’s reaction to the poll results betrayed his sense of hurt. He tweeted:

Although the eight local bodies that the BJP has captured account of barely 0.1% of the state’s population, the chief minister has sought to project the victory out as decisive mandate by the against the “Congress’s propaganda to malign pro-development Madhya Pradesh government in national and international press over the Vyapam case”.

The morale of party workers was further boosted by a message from Prime Minister Narendra. As he left on a two-day tour of the United Arab Emirates, the prime minister sent out this tweet.

However, party workers were quick to notice one fact: Modi had failed to single out Chief Minister Chouhan for special mention. A senior BJP leader said on condition of anonymity that the prime minister’s tweet spells out a strong message to party workers ‒ the victory is the BJP’s not the chief minister’s. For Chouhan to misconstrue the victory as public endorsement of his innocence in the Vyapam case would be a grave mistake, this leader said. But the embattled chief minister is desperate to prove that he enjoys the full confidence of the prime minister as well as the people of Madhya Pradesh.

When the prime minister praised Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan chief ministers at a rally in Bihar last week for having rid their states of the "Bimaru" acronym that has been used as an insult for the so-called sickly states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, Chouhan’s supporters were quick to interpret this as a sign of Modi’s tacit support for their Vyapam-scalded leader. But the senior leader said that it may be wrong to read Modi’s “general claim for BJP governments’ good governance records in an election speech in a non-BJP state as exoneration of the Madhya Pradesh chief minister”.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan had another reason to be anxious. Even though Parliament was logjammed for weeks as the Opposition demanded Chouhan’s resignation for being alleged involved in the scam, Prime Minister Modi failed to come to his defence.

Unassailable position

That said, the BJP is too well entrenched in the Madhya Pradesh’s bi-polar politics and Chouhan is too strong a leader to by bothered by any opposition from the moribund Congress. “It’s a victory of our ideology and I am overwhelmed”, the chief minister told BJP workers at the party headquarters on August 16. “The Congress maligned us because it could not fight us electorally.”

The Congress has completely failed to present itself as a credible alternative to the ruling party despite stridently highlighting the horrendous impact of the Vyapam scam that has hurt the careers and the futures of lakhs of youths in the state.

But ever since the scam surfaced in July 2013, the BJP has claimed that the allegations are an opposition conspiracy to malign the government. It has said that only 1,600 or irregularities have been detected out of six lakh recruitments for various government departments since 2007, that the chief minister is as holy as river Ganga, and that it was the chief minister himself who blew the first whistle to lift the lid off the Vyapam rigging in the first place.

In the run up to the local body elections, BJP leaders addressed press conferences across the state to reinforce this narrative. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh took a keener interest in this round of electioneering than he did in the previous ones to hammer the same points in election rallies.

Congress weakness

The Congress, in sharp contrast, fell woefully short of resources and coherent strategies to counter the BJP line. None of its big leaders such as Digvijay Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamal Nath bothered to campaign for party candidates. They cited the ongoing parliament session as a reason for staying away. Less prominent leaders such as state Congress president Arun Yadav and leader of opposition Satya Deo Katare do not inspire enough confidence to galvanise workers. For one, they simply cannot match the chief minister, either in stature or in oratory. For another, neither is viewed as being above board when it comes to allegations of selling party nominations to unsuitable candidates.

Not surprisingly, Arun Yadav’s reaction to the poll result was no different from the excuses he had offered in the aftermath of the Congress’s previous drubbings: “The BJP bought over the victory abusing its resources and official machinery." But state Congress vice president Laxman Singh, who is Digvijay Singh’s younger brother, was more forthright. He admitted that disunity in the Congress proved its undoing in the election.

Silencing dissent
These are, however, relatively insignificant factors for the Congress debacle. The most important reason behind the party’s humiliating drubbings in election after election in the state is the BJP’s dubious success in suborning potential trouble-makers when possible and pressuring them into submission when necessary. In its 12 years of uninterrupted rule, the BJP has not only enfeebled the Congress down to the grassroots level but has also virtually silenced the left-liberal voices with combined use of official machinery and political clout.

Protests on streets against government are far fewer and less aggressive than they used to be during the time Digvijay Singh headed the government. In addition, peoples’ movements championing rights of the oppressed classes, particularly adivasis, in connection with rights on forest or against big dams have become dormant or have been silenced.

Another BJP’s victory in the local body elections is no surprise. What is surprising is that the chief minister is trying to project it as a proof of his innocence in the Vyapam scam.