Battle for 311 seats: Will it be a BJP coup or Cong miracle?

Past the half-way mark, Elections 2014 now enters a politically-critical stage where the remaining four phases accounting for 311 seats will see polling in the most significant states with big players in the fray — their fates in the hands of 500 million voters.

Updated on: Apr 19, 2014, 12:09:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Past the half-way mark, Elections 2014 now enters a politically-critical stage where the remaining four phases accounting for 311 seats will see polling in the most significant states with big players in the fray — their fates in the hands of 500 million voters.

Congress-activists-hold-party-flags-during-an-election-campaign-in-support-of-their-party-candidate-Somen-Mitra-in-Kolkata-PTI-photo

These 311 seats were a happy hunting ground for the Congress in 2009 when it bagged 109 compared to the BJP’s 57. This time around, they will be an acid test for the ‘Modi wave’ while the Congress has the tough task of preventing the saffron party from eating into its pie.

Large chunks (86 seats) of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — the states together contribute a fifth (120) of the 543 Lok Sabha seats — will go to polls along with Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat and Punjab, where the Shromani Akali Dal, the BJP’s oldest ally, has been in power for eight years. Then there is Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, where the BJP is yet to open its account, and West Bengal, where party veteran-turned-rebel Jaswant Singh was its sole winner in 2009.

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In UP and Bihar, the BJP will hope to better its 2009 tally of 13 seats (out of 86). In Bihar’s 27 seats, set to go to polls the Congress-RJD combine is set to improve its tally of four. Pollsters, however, have predicted the Congress will be on the losing side in UP, where it had got 19 of the 59 segments that would go to polls.

These states are also set for some high-voltage campaigns with the three biggest players, Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli), Rahul Gandhi (Amethi) and Narendra Modi (Varanasi), facing the electorate on April 30, May 7 and May 12, respectively. Other prominent leaders in the fray include AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal (Varanasi), BJP’s LK Advani (Gandhinagar) and SP’s Mulayam Singh Yadav (Mainpuri and Azamgarh).

Modi’s bid for the PM’s chair may not take off without the BJP making deep inroads in the southern states of Andhra and Tamil Nadu. Traditionally, the BJP has had limited influence here, but is currently riding high on new-found alliances.

In Tamil Nadu, it has a rainbow alliance with five parties with a collective vote share of 20% in the 2009 polls and 22% in the 2011 assembly polls.

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In Telangana and Seemandhra, where parliamentary and assembly elections will he held simultaneously, the BJP is confident of victory in some seats thanks to its topsy-turvy alliance with Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP. But the BJP-TDP still has to overcome Jaganmohan Reddy’s confident YSR Congress. The alliance is looking to gain majorly in Seemandhra (25 LS seats) due to the anti-Congress sentiment but hasn’t lost hope in Telangana too, where it believes the Congress’ failure to tie up with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi may work to its advantage.

The Congress, which won 30 of the 42 seats in Andhra last time, is hoping for a face-saver in Telangana (17 seats).

A keen contest is on the cards in Punjab where the Congress won 8 of 13 seats in 2009 but lost the assembly polls to Parkash Singh Badal’s SAD. The Congress has fielded some of its top leaders, such as Ambika Soni and Amarinder Singh, to take on the BJP-SAD, which has fielded Arun Jaitley as Amarinder’s opponent in Amritsar.

The Big 2, however, will be relegated to the sidelines in Bengal, even though they have fielded candidates from most seats. The contest here is primarily between the Mamata Banerjee-ruled Trinamool Congress and CPM-led Left parties for 38 of the 42 seats that still have to vote.

The two hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, where the Congress is facing infighting, and four seats in Jammu and Kashmir will also see poll action.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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