The halfway mark of the Lok Sabha election is here. By the end of the day on May 7, voters would have delivered a verdict on 284 seats across the nation. That’s more than 272 seats needed for a simple majority. The BJP’s election strategist-in-chief, Amit Shah, believes that the saffron party has already won more than 60 per cent of the 190 seats that saw polling in Phase 1 and Phase 2.
Phase 3 is the BJP territory. Of the 95 seats in Phase 3, the BJP bagged 72 in 2019. Moreover, in 78 seats, the BJP also secured more than 40 per cent of the votes. This time elections will be held across 93 of the 95 seats in Phase 3. This is because the BJP has already bagged the Surat seat unopposed in Gujarat and polling on the Anantnag-Rajouri seat has been deferred to May 25.
The Congress, which has not dominated this phase ever, has seen its share decline from 27 seats in 2009 to a measly four in 2019.
For the BJP, the state of Gujarat, which goes to the polls in its entirety in Phase 3, single-handedly contributed 26 seats, which is almost a third of the BJP’s 72-seat tally in 2019. In Karnataka too, the BJP picked up all 14 seats in 2019 in this phase with a massive vote share advantage.
There are 47 bastions across Phase 3. These are seats that the incumbent won back-to-back in three Lok Sabha elections. The BJP holds 42 of these 47 bastions. The Congress holds only one of these seats. The remaining four are with other parties. The BJP knows that to come anywhere close to the dominance it exhibited in 2019 across Phase 3, the voters of Gujarat and Karnataka will have to back it unflinchingly.
According to reports from the ground in Gujarat, the BJP is set to bag all 26 seats once again, even though there will be tight contests in a couple of seats in the north of the state. But Karnataka is proving to be a bit of an enigma for the BJP. Phase 3 begins on a tricky note. Just as polls closed across 14 seats in Karnataka in Phase 2, the BJP’s ally – the JDS – was rocked by serious allegations of sexual misconduct. Worse, the allegations were levelled against the top brass of the JDS. The survivors named the son and grandson of former prime minister and party founder HD Deve Gowda. The flurry of videotapes, testimonials and cases has not just caused an embarrassment to the BJP but has also threatened to undermine the woman voter’s faith in Prime Minister Modi’s vow to work for their uplift.
The BJP has publicly tried to distance itself from the JDS. It has also accused the Congress state government of sitting on the allegations when they first surfaced last year. But the BJP’s defensive play means that it hasn’t been able to take the fight to the Congress camp. Instead, the allegations have forced it onto the backfoot from where it appears vulnerable as it fends off its arch-foe’s barbs.
In 2019, the women’s vote played a decisive factor in the BJP’s re-election not just from Karnataka but also beyond. Now, after the sex scandal, there’s no telling how women voters will react, at least not in the remaining 14 seats of Karnataka. The allegations of sexual abuse and rape have additionally also served to negate the BJP’s shrill Karnataka-focused campaign on “love jihad”. For a while, it appeared that the tragic killing of Neha Hiremath could be the X-factor that turned the Hindu and woman voters decisively towards the BJP. That can’t be said as of now.
In Karnataka, the BJP is also hobbled by infighting, primarily on account of a rebellion against the party’s tallest Lingayat leader BS Yediyurappa and his family. There are signs that this internecine war has not been resolved in favour of the BJP. This is bad news for the party as Phase 3 is spread across the Lingayat-dominated belt of the state.
Over in neighbouring Maharashtra, the electoral pitch is even harder to read. Political volatility and cleaved voter loyalties have made it impossible to read the mood on the ground. But given that the state sends the second highest number of MPs to Parliament and contributed 41 seats to the NDA kitty, it is a vital cog in the BJP’s plans to return to power. Maharashtra will see titanic clashes in the Sharad Pawar heartland. Here, it’s a war between INDIA bloc’s Pawar and NDA’s Pawar. Consequently, the contest is as presidential as it is proprietorial.
One gets the sense that the verdict from the Pawar belt holds the key to Maharashtra and Phase 3.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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