As India's Election Enters Third Phase, The BJP Faces Stiff Headwinds

As India gears up to vote in the third crucial phase of the ongoing general election, there is a close contest for 261 seats in the Lok Sabha, where either BJP or Congress are in a direct contest, or the entry of regional outfits has turned the polls into a triangular battle. These seats are concentrated in 9 states.

If perceptions on the ground are to be believed, the incumbent BJP, which is widely speculated to return to power, will only benefit if its opponents split votes among each other. In a direct duel, the results might look very different for the saffron party.

The 9 states where the battle for 261 parliamentary seats, out of a total of 543, is being fought are Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and Punjab.

94 of these seats will go to the polls on May 7, Tuesday.

UP: The Key Battleground

BJP has been winning the bulk of its seats from the central Indian state of UP, which is not only the most populous, but also politically vibrant. It sends a maximum of 80 members to Parliament. The BJP had grabbed 73 and 62 seats respectively in the 2014 and 2019 elections in the state. The constituencies of both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi are in UP – Varanasi and Rae Bareli (formerly Amethi). It also has the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, which has been painstakingly turned into a mascot of the BJP’s victory planks for this election. The BJP’s second star leader after PM Modi, the saffron-clad Yogi Adityanath, is chief minister of the state.

However, in many places, Muslims were also appreciative of BJP leaders and the rollout of successful welfare schemes sans any discrimination. “BJP leaders have visited our houses. The benefits of health schemes and housing projects for the poor have helped all, with little discrimination,” a villager on the Moradabad to Delhi road exclaimed.

Despite the state being the castle of its ideology and its campaign battery hailing from here, the BJP is anxious as the opposition has struck an alliance – the Samajwadi Party of Akhilesh Yadav and Congress. Muslims seem to have decided to vote en masse for the SP-Congress alliance. They have even refused to react to the communal overtones of the BJP leadership, which has now resorted to using time-tested tactics to polarize the electorate along religious lines.

The BJP is in fact putting its bets on the hopes of the division of Muslim, Dalit and OBC (other backward caste) votes among the alliance, and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, which has fielded 20 Muslims, the maximum by any party in India. Observers suggest this is a ploy to divide votes, to the favor of the BJP. But reporters on the ground deny that Muslims are ready to be hoodwinked by the BSP. “There seems to be a total solidarity for the SP-Congress combine among the community. Even the Yadavs, who had drifted towards BJP in recent elections have woken up to vote for their original leadership,” a reporter told The Friday Times.

Meanwhile, another reporter said that BSP candidates have become a nuisance for BJP candidates in several constituencies. “Apart from Muslims, BSP has fielded Thakurs, Brahmins, Jats and others. Some of them are putting up a strong fight, and it means they will eat into BJP’s upper caste votes,” she said.

This correspondent also travelled to some West UP constituencies like Ghaziabad, Noida, Amroha, Sambhal, Moradabad and Rampur, and based on conversations with a sizeable number of Muslims, found that the community rose above even petty divisions on a local level and is unanimous in deciding to vote for a single candidate.

However, in many........

© The Friday Times

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