Even as opinion polls predict a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sweep in Gujarat, the party fears a low level of voting that may upset its applecart.
The fear might not be ill-founded.
The party could gather less than 10,000 people when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee addressed a public meeting Friday evening in the part of the city that falls under Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani's Gandhinagar constituency.
The Sardar Patel stadium wore an empty look, and the meeting was delayed till enough people could be brought in.
Health Minister and BJP's star campaigner Sushma Swaraj was less lucky. Party managers reportedly expressed their inability to gather people for a public meet she was to address in Gandhinagar. The meeting was cancelled.
But the BJP leaders are not disheartened.
"Advani's Bharat Uday Yatra and (Chief Minister) Narendra Modi's campaigns have been well received. We are the winning party," a BJP leader told IANS.
However, party sources admit that there seems to be no burning issue before the electorate and people are not responding enthusiastically to election campaigns.
{{/usCountry}}However, party sources admit that there seems to be no burning issue before the electorate and people are not responding enthusiastically to election campaigns.
{{/usCountry}}Add to that the rising temperatures and families going away on vacation. All this could lead to a low turnout at polling booths on Tuesday.
In recent years, general elections conducted in the heat of summer have evoked poor response from voters. The voting in the state was limited to 44.01 percent and 35.92 percent respectively in the general elections of 1991 and 1996.
Political observers point out the thumb rule that a low polling traditionally helps the Congress party.
The logic is that those few who vote without fail are mostly Congress supporters -- the poor and the minorities -- whereas the urban educated elite who mainly support the BJP stay at home to escape the heat.
Not without reason, then, that Advani stresses at every public meeting the need to ensure that every possible vote is cast.
"Voting is not only your right but duty. There are some countries in the world where citizens are fined for failing to vote. It may not be mandatory here but you all must ensure that every citizen votes," he told one meeting here in the presence of Vajpayee, who repeated the message.
There was hardly a single place during Advani's Bharat Uday Yatra where he did not emphasise the need for high voting.
"There should be a healthy competition among states to register higher voting. The people of Gujarat should take up the challenge and achieve the number one spot in this area too," Vajpayee told Gandhinagar voters.
Low turnout can even be the most decisive factor in a close contest. The BJP won three seats in the state in 1999 with a margin of less than 4,000 votes.
The only time the state polled more than 60 per cent votes in a Lok Sabha election was in 1967 when 63.77 per cent voted. In 1999, the turnout was 47.03 per cent.
In December 2002, a 61.52 per cent polling helped the BJP to secure a landslide win in the assembly.
That election, however, was fought on the issue of communal violence in the state in 2002. The BJP fears that the absence of any emotional issue may impact the outcome.
The BJP won 20 out of 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 1999, and later won one more in a by-election, reducing the Congress tally to five.