East & West divide deepens in Lok Sabha elections
Image credit X @AITCOfficial
BJP faces heat in West while easterly wind soothes
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, May 9: The fate of the ‘Mission South’ of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be known on June 4. But the BJP leaders are noting sharpening ‘East & West’ divide in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
After the polling for the three phases of elections, the shrill meter in electioneering touched a crescendo yesterday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unleashed a lightening attack on the Congress for the party’s “silence against Adani and Ambani”.
Modi wondered if the “Congress had taken bagful of black money from the two corporate houses”. The Congress hit back, accusing that Modi had admitted the “failure of his government on black money”.
But political pundits are telling contrasting tales on the eastern and the western flanks of India’s political geography. Their commentaries are also finding affirmation in weirdness of the actions of the people linked to the BJP leaders.
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Zee Gujrati reported that a son of the BJP leader captured a polling booth, and live-streamed his pressing buttons on the EVM (Electronic Voting Machines). He has been arrested after his video went viral.
The BJP workers are allegedly pulling down posters in Indore Lok Sabha seat where the voters are being urged upon to vote for NOTA (None of the Above). This is strange, for NOTA, even if it polls the highest number of votes, cannot win elections.
The candidate with the second largest number of votes will be declared winner as per rules. The Congress nominee Akshay Bam had withdrawn his nomination papers in the last 30-minute to leave his party stranded in Indore Lok Sabha seat.
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The political commentators are noting that the BJP is running into the “popular anger against the two back-stabbers in the Maharashtra politics who split their parent parties to partake in power in Mumbai”.
But the easterly winds are soothing the BJP leaders, claim political observers. Modi’s sharpness on Hindu-Muslim politics is seen polarising voters in West Bengal and further eastwards.
Kolkata-based political observers note that the BJP may count on the support of the workers of the Left and the Congress in West Bengal. Incidentally, this factor was reasoned for the BJP’s bagful of victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
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The BJP had won a total of 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. A large number of the political observers are leaning for a far higher number of Lok Sabha seats for the BJP from West Bengal.
Reports from Northeast suggest that the BJP hold in the region is intact. The Citizenship Amendment Act and the promise for the Uniform Common Civil Code (UCC) didn’t adversely affect the BJP campaigns, stated Guwahati-based political observers.
The BJP is also seen gaining grounds in Odisha. Local political observers claim that the BJP is gaining grounds in the absence of the Congress structure in the state.
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