Last hurrah for Lok Sabha polls amid people’s assertions
Image credit X @BJP4India
Modi 3.0 without moral halo gets votes of observers
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, June 1: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will conclude ‘meditation’ around conclusion of voting for the last 57 parliamentary constituencies in the Lok Sabah elections. Wrapped in saffron sheet of cloth with Shaivaite forehead markings, Modi looked from newspapers and videos in meditative trance at the people before the Saturday voting.
Varanasi parliamentary constituency tops the VIP Lok Sabha seats in the seventh phase of polling. Modi’s Kashi bond as a Shiva-bhakt has been at the core of the narrative of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Hindutva is the BJP’s poll cornerstone.
Modi will essay a facile win in the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat. The Congress will skip the television monkey-dance over the Exit Poll. The Opposition party seemingly sniffed that pollsters’ lower end of the projections for the BJP will be 280 Lok Sabha seats.
The western media announced, through commentaries, that Modi 3.0 is on the anvil. The Modi-baiters have struck a tone of consolation ahead of the June 4 verdict.
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“Modi has proven critics wrong so many times that there’s a dread now in predicting poll outcome,” said a political editor with a leading newsmagazine. The media fraternity largely has stayed away from sticking necks out to quantitatively measure their ground assessment.
“This was neither 2014 nor 2019 Lok Sabah elections. The people in trains, buses, and roundabouts at tea stalls are now openly bashing Modi without fears of reprisals. This is a big takeaway,” said another political editor with a newsmagazine.
Yogendra Yadav, a Modi critic and a psephologist, in a long column for The Indian Express has indicated the BJP’s likely tally in the Lok Sabha poll around 250. He argued that the tally could go further down if what he heard on the ground that ‘janata chunao lad rahi hai (the people are contesting polls) comes true’.
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But Yadav has an issue of label to fend off. His walk in the Bharat Jodo Yatra of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi robs credibility of his assertions.
Within the media, the larger consensus remains that Modi has an impregnable shield of ‘Labharthis (beneficiaries)’. The people in a large number have got tangible benefits.
The unmistakable political lesson from elections, beginning with Odisha in 2000 and Delhi Assembly polls in 2013, asserts the people’s priority for tangible benefits. The people on the ground are largely dismissive of the lofty and grandiose electoral slogans around democracy and secularism.
“What the people get in addition to their earnings from livelihoods influence the voting choice. Upri aamdani (extra income) is the common desire of the people,” added a veteran political observer, emphasizing the saying: “The house is always short of an extra room.”
Yadav noted in his column that Modi-led BJP with a Lok Sabha tally of 270 and less will take away the moral rights of the prime minister. Television will endorse Modi 3.0. Morality is too abstract in politics to gain spotlight.
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