A section of the Indian media has probably misheard Cartography as Comfortography. Ever since Maharashtra’s non-BJP electoral fate was sealed on November 26, Indian media outlets have churned out pieces displaying the slacking fortunes of Bharatiya Janata Party. For this, they use the maps of the Indian union and the regressing tide of saffron on it.

While the BJP might’ve once flaunted a bhagwa map to bolster its rhetoric of political domination, there is scarcely a reason for journalists to report on that trend in the same terms. Such reports can be misleading – some are even erroneous – since they do not account for national alliances, president’s rule, vote shares or even the BJP’s colossal Lok Sabha victory only a few months ago. 

India Today published the most-widely shared of these pieces, comparing the BJP-governed state governments in India in December 2017 and November 2019.  “With the latest loss at the state-level political game, the BJP has been reduced to mere 40 per cent of the national landscape as compared to a whopping 71 per cent it commanded over in 2017,” notes their article.

There are a few problems with this map. To begin with, most of the media outlets seemed confused about Sikkim, Mizoram and Tamil Nadu. Glance through them once:

News 18:

Hindu Businessline:

Outlook:

TheWire:

The Quint:

Mint:

The Federal:

Scroll:

While Mint, News 18, India Today showed Sikkim in saffron, Quint, Hindu Businessline and Outlook did not. 

All of them show Mizoram in saffron, but Scroll did not. 

All of them also do not show Tamil Nadu to be a part of the NDA, except Quint and Scroll.

The Outlook map shows that Goa has a non-NDA government – not true.

Sikkim

The BJP only won two out of 32 seats in the Sikkim state elections in April this year. The Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) won 13 seats, and the Sikkim Kranti Morcha (SKM) won 17 seats. In August, however, 10 MLAs from SDF defected to BJP and another two to the SKM. Between the election and the defection, the BJP was the main Opposition party in the state. However, SKM joined the National Democratic Alliance in May this year. 

Keeping this in mind, there is an NDA government in power in Sikkim, though an Economic Times article from August this year might have added to the confusion when it erroneously described BJP in Sikkim as the “main opposition”.

The Wire and Scroll brought out this nuance regarding Sikkim by attributing a lighter shade of saffron to ‘BJP in alliance’ or ‘NDA’ in their map legends. However, The Wire missed out on Tamil Nadu.

Scroll did cover Tamil Nadu, but missed out on Mizoram, where although the BJP is not in power, the governing Mizo National Front is part of both BJP-led North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) and the NDA.

Tamil Nadu 

In Tamil Nadu, the governing All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) joined the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance earlier this year. To be clear, the BJP did not win a single seat in Tamil Nadu in the 2016 state elections or the 2019 general elections, but the pressure that the party can exert on the AIADMK cannot be dismissed.

If media outlets show Meghalaya in saffron ostensibly because the governing National People’s Party (NPP) in the state is part of the NDA, and where the BJP won only 2 seats in the 2018 Assembly elections, surely they shouldn’t miss out Tamil Nadu. The situation is quite the same in Mizoram too.

BJP losing foothold? What about Kashmir?

Broadly, such maps also fail to speak important facts. Even though India Today might claim that “saffron party seems to be losing its political foothold in the country,” the BJP was the single-largest party in the recent Maharashtra Assembly elections, winning almost double the seats than the INC, NCP and the Shiv Sena. 

In a state like Madhya Pradesh, where the Congress party won the maximum seats in the 2018 Assembly elections and formed a government, the BJP could again boast of the highest vote share. The party also spread its wings in states like Odisha in 2019 and Kerala in 2016, where its vote share in the assembly elections jumped by 14.3% and 4.7% respectively. 

Nationally, the BJP overwhelmed its opponents in the recent Lok Sabha elections and won a mind-boggling 303 seats by itself.

So while media outlets would like to sell a story of BJP’s decline to their audience, the facts are not on their side. The party’s partners might be acting difficult, and opponents might have found a greater room for political manoeuvre, but this does not take away from the BJP that Indians are coming out to vote for it than any other player in the fray — both in parliamentary and Assembly elections. 

Most importantly, these maps ignore the fact that the BJP-led government at the Centre effectively governs the Union Territories (UT) of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh at the moment. 

The Modi government has rendered Jammu & Kashmir into a UT with legislature and Ladakh into a UT without a legislature through the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill, 2019. This has meant that Ladakh is being governed by the Central government through a lieutenant-governor, and so is Jammu & Kashmir until it goes to elections.

But since most media outlets let Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh stay grey, the maps gave an impression that the BJP does not govern the UTs – when the reality is quite the opposite. 

Alas, The Wire, which furnished us the details when others swallowed them, also fell prey to a factual error here. Its map depicted Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh to be under President’s Rule as of November 25, 2019. In fact, the President’s Rule had been revoked on October 31.