Dance of Demoracy 2019

India will be witnessing general elections in the coming month, where about 900 million voters including millions of first-time voters will participate in the festival of democracy. The once extraordinarily dominant party that has seen some of its clouds dwindled and of course splintered opposition making this election more interesting. In this article, Let's discuss how things might turn out.

In 2014, general elections, the key factor was anti-UPA and anger against Congress. Modi led BJP was able to encash this anger in a very adequate manner into votes and established a government with a majority however current year election issues are different for different political parties. BJP is going into the election with slogans of nationalism, national security, strong leadership. BJP is pitching everything around PM Modi, while on the other hand INC and regional parties would like to focus the attention on the failure of the government by referring to the issues of unemployment,  farmers distress, agrarian crisis and the issues of corruption with regard to Rafale deal. Opposition parties are not willing to let BJP hijack the election only on the nationalism, they need to draw the attention of voter to the issues that matter to the voter at the ground.

As we see, BJP and Modi himself have been making Modi and his cult of personality the central issue. A similar thing happened in 2004 for Atal Bihari Vajpayee but as we recall this did not go in favour of BJP. Currently, BJP is saying that they are offering PM Modi as a prime ministerial candidate but who is going to be a match against Modi. The opposition is not ignoring it. If the regional parties and INC would want to make an impact on voters mind they should raise the issue of what the government promised when it came into the power and what they delivered. If you look at the performance of government there is no strong anger against this government at the same time people are not in a celebratory mode either. BJP won the election based largely on promises. So it's up to the voters to decide how the government has performed compared to what they promised. If this attention is drawn to the people and if people make this judgement about performance,  people would be more critical about the performance of government.

 It should be about these issues but that's not how the Indian politics work. There has been another issue that raised after Balakot attacks. No doubt this air strikes done will help to boost the BJP performance however it will be mostly in urban areas and slightly less in rural areas. As we move closer to the days of the election, as candidates will be announced, it is likely to subside greatly by rural areas and to some extent in urban areas. Another issue brought by INC and opposition is bringing up questions on air strikes. More the INC and opposition raises the questions on attack such as asking the number of dead bodies to the government and to give the evidence, will damage their prospect. It is not the time to ask such questions to the government but it would be more relevant to ask questions about security failure. The government did give a reply to Pakistan our air forces led an attack, but what did government do to investigate such a big security failure. The opposition should put pressure on the government to investigate security intelligence failure.

Another decision of not holding the J&K assembly election along with general elections. It's not clear why this decision was taken, It appears to have some sort of politics involved in the decision. How state may be ready to vote for Lok Sabha elections, but the situation is bad to hold assembly elections which could have been held simultaneously?  If security is the reason then how can you hold elections for Lok Sabha? We can sense something there; If BJP comes in the power in 2019, they think, they would have an advantage as mood may be favour of BJP.

As of today, looking at main political parties BJP and INC, the NDA led by BJP is well ahead of INC led UPA. BJP is in the range of 195-215 seats also INC will find it difficult to reach 100 seats and the number of seats will hover roughly 90-100. Considering the gap and between BJP and INC, BJP is the front runner and will be the leading party followed by number 2 party INC.

Looking at results of recent assembly election in the Hindi heartland INC will have gain as compared to 2014. It will gain in Rajasthan, Gujrat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and few other states however this gain will be less than what INC expecting. If you convert assembly election results to see parliamentary seats in Lok Sabha elections. Sums 29 in Madhya Pradesh  25 in Rajasthan and  11 in Chhattisgarh. BJP still leads in 18 seats in Madhya Pradesh and INC leads only at 11 seats. In Rajasthan BJP leads in 13 seats and INC leads in only 12 seats. It is only in Chhattisgarh INC lead in 9 seats and BJP leads in 2 seats. Interestingly, BJP is still in commanding position even after losing the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections not in Rajasthan and in Chhattisgarh. Assuming its national election and current PM Modi will be leading it, we can consider 5% vote share gain in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in favour of BJP, which then would get more seats than the current tally with assembly election results. BJP would not lose much since the opposition is not united in this region.

Uttar Pradesh is the state where major action happens during general elections as it sends the most number of MPs to the Lok Sabha. BJP is bound to go down as BSP and SP have joined hand together. Out of 80 Lok Sabha seats, BJP can be getting roughly 37-38 seats and SP+BSP can be around 34-36 seats. INC may not be able to perform well in UP and it may get just 3-4 seats. Despite SP+BSP alliance BJP may get a lead, it looks tight consent.

Looking at the eastern part,  BJP had successful results in North-East in assembly elections, but recent controversies such as NRC and Citizen Amendment Bill will have an impact. North-East including Assam has 25 Lok Sabha seats and in 2014 BJP has won 8 out it. BJP may add 7-8 more seats from this region. BJP may acquire 1 seat from AUDF and 2 from INC from Assam, 2 seats from Tripura, 1 seat from Meghalaya however on other seats BJP may face difficulty in gaining and overall it will not be crossing 16 seats in North-East.

In West Bengal, BJP is heading for a major gain as compared to 2014. It will be a BJP vs. Trinamool Congress. Nevertheless, Trinamool is far ahead of BJP but BJP is catching up fast and it may get 8-10 seats. Odisha is an adjacent state, where there would be three-way contest BJP-BJD-INC of which INC may not perform well. BJP will around get 5-7 seats from Odisha.

Gazing at INC, it has decided to go alone in some states and in some states with alliances. The idea of Mahagatbandhan is also not materialised well as the way it was expected and this will not work in favour of INC. BJP managed to take steps ahead of INC. Despite being in controversies with Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and JDU in Bihar, AGP in Assam BJP has managed to form an alliance. In terms of forming alliances with a number of parties in different states, BJP has managed outsmarted the INC, which failed to form alliances in many states. INC has not made clear about an alliance with AAP in Delhi.

Introduction of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in INC would attract female voters. But the problem with INC UP, even if Priyanka manages to infuse more party workers and voters it may not help. Adding even 7-10% vote share to existing vote share of INC will not give additional seats compared to 2014. She will attract votes but won't be sufficient to turn votes in seats. INC should have brought Priyanka about a year ago to capitalise her campaigning into seats. Recent reports indicate that 21 million+ women voters are gone missing from the voter list that is an approximately average number of 38000 women per constituency in India. In UP, this missing voters could swing the election results. Jayalalitha and Mamata Banerjee are some woman leader, who have attracted women votes in the last decade.

2019 election will be held in 7 phases as compared to 2014, which was held in 9 phases. In the current election, single states are going through multiple phases, which raises questions to many. What is the rationale behind having elections in different phases? to hold free and fair elections. ECI says since there are not adequate a number of security forces available, need to conduct a poll with limited resources and cannot deploy all the security forces in an adequate number to all the polling station to be held in a day. Polls are held in phases to move security forces in a meantime, that the logic of phased election. But then why a state like Tamilnadu goes to poll in a day and Bihar goes to poll in seven phases?  Why small states like Assam are going for polls in 4 phases? Secondly, if the election commission can manage to hold the state election for Madhya Pradesh in one day, the number of the polling station and voters remains the same, but when it comes to Lok Sabha it requires 4 phases. However, this gives more room for the code of conduct violations too. In states like Bihar people would be voting in one constituency and campaigning would be going in the adjacent constituency, this influences votes mind. The whole idea of giving 48 hours before the election is to give a voter time to think carefully.