FEBRUARY 2014

POINT
OUT
as the popular choice for the Prime
Minister’s post with more than half
of the respondents favouring him as
against the Congress vice president
Rahul Gandhi, Congress president Sonia
Gandhi or Arvind Kejriwal of the
AAP who gets about 5% to 3% of popular
votes. Similarly, a majority of the
respondents, almost 61%, have refused
to give the UPA another opportunity
while 69% rated the UPA government’s
performance as poor or very poor.
From the surveys, it is clear that if
elections are held at present, the Congress
is likely to suffer huge losses in
Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya
Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and the
southern states of Andhra Pradesh and
Tamil Nadu. In Maharashtra too, the
Congress party appears to be on the
downslide. In the two non-Congressruled
states of Tamil Nadu and West
Bengal, J Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK
and Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool
Congress respectively are expected
to do well. Surveys have predicted
about 15 to 23 seats for Jayalalithaa and
20 to 28 seats for Mamata.
The surprise package has been the
two big Hindi speaking states of Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar. In UP, the Samajwadi
Party (SP) of Mulayam Singh
Yadav in unlikely to make major gains
and is likely to end up with 20 to 24
seats, something similar to its bêtenoir,
the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)
of Mayawati. The Congress that has
21 members from UP may end up in
single digit. The BJP is likely to make
major gains in the state by securing
about 30 seats.
Likewise in Bihar, the Nitish
Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) that
broke away from the NDA over naming
Modi as its prime ministerial candidate,
is likely to suffer losses. The
surveys suggest that the BJP is on the
ascendant in the state while the JD (U)
is on the decline.
The mood of the people suggested
that if elections were held in
January 2014, the UPA would have got
28% votes, while the NDA and others
would have managed to get 36%
votes each. It is to be seen whether the
Congress Party that has named Rahul
Gandhi as the head of its campaign for
the Lok Sabha polls makes a dramatic
turnaround in the next three months,
before the country goes to vote. Likewise,
the surveys are a wakeup call for
the regional parties like the SP, JD (U),
BSP and the DMK.
COVER STORY GENERAL ELECTION
NaMo Factor
Whether one agrees or not, the
fact is that there is a positive
mood in favour of Narendra
Modi across the country. So
much so that the BJP might end up getting
its highest ever number of MPs –
more than what it could achieve during
the Ayodhya movement of the 1990s.
The Modi factor has been debated
threadbare by his supporters and critics,
but it has been very clearly demonstrated
in the five states that went to the assembly
polls in November last year. The decimation
of the Congress in Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan and Delhi, besides its inability
to encash the Jhiram Ghati massacre in
Bastar that wiped off almost the front
Congress leadership in Chhattisgarh, is
a clear indication of the Modi factor that
prevailed upon the voters. Whether one
agrees or not, the fact remains that in
Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh,
the BJP was expected to do well – but the
results exceeded far beyond the expectations
of even die-hard BJP supporters.
In Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh
Chouhan, with his ‘son of the soil’ image
among the rural masses was always
expected to win. But Chouhan, who was
seeking a third term, led the party to victory
in 165 out of a total of 230 seats in
the state assembly – at a time when most
opinion polls had ruled out any wave in
the state.
Likewise in Rajasthan, the Congress’
rout was expected, but the BJP eventually
ended up with a tally 162 in the 200-member
house. The Congress managed to get
only 21 seats, down by 74 seats from the
previous term. In Chhattisgarh too, there
was a keen battle between the Congress
and the BJP but in the end, the BJP managed
to win a simple majority and form
the government – third time in a row. In
the tribal region of South Chhattisgarh
and Bastar, the BJP which had done exceedingly
well in 2008 elections, lost out
possibly due to the sympathy wave following
the massacre of Mahendra Karma
and other senior Congress leaders but the
losses were minimised by BJP’s improved
position in Central Chhattisgarh.
In Delhi too, the Congress was not
expected to win but the surprise was
AAP that spoiled BJP’s party and stopped
it from getting to a simple majority. The
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FEBRUARY 2014