NEW DELHI - As India enters the crucial round three of its month-long,
five-phase parliamentary elections on Thursday, the electoral fate of the
ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the opposition and
the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) prime ministerial candidate Lal Krishna
Advani and 1,565 other candidates will be sealed by over 140 million voters.
While Gandhi looks comfortably positioned in her Rae Bareli constituency in
Uttar Pradesh, a traditional Nehru-Gandhi dynasty stronghold for over five
decades, the Hindu nationalist BJP premier hopeful Advani isn't badly off
either in Gandhinagar (Gujarat) where he has trounced his opponents in each
election since 1991.
Other prominent political leaders in the fray in this phase include
erstwhile prime minister H D Deve Gowda, Sharad Yadav (Madhepura), Shahnawaz
Hussein (Bhagalpur), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna) and Yashodhara Raje Scindia
(Gwalior).
The third round of the polling will cover a swathe of 107 constituencies across
11 states and two union territories. Ballots will be cast for 26 seats in
Gujarat, 16 in Madhya Pradesh, 15 in Uttar Pradesh, 14 in West Bengal, 11 each
in Bihar and Karnataka, 10 in Maharashtra and one each in Jammu and Kashmir,
Sikkim, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. This important polling phase
will also witness the election of a new 32-member legislature in India's
northeastern border state of Sikkim.
In the wake of this phase, polling will be wrapped up for 372 of the total 543
Lok Sabha (Lower House) seats. Observers point out that by this stage in the
2004 general elections, the National Democratic Alliance combine had bagged 45
seats while the now ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had scooped 30 and
the left parties 19.
However, despite the evidence of past arithmetic, poll analysts assert that
voter turnout could still swing things either way.
It's quite another matter though that India's egregious heat (43 degrees
Celsius plus) and an overall disenchantment with the political class have acted
as a dampener for much of the electorate this year. As a result, voter turnout
has been a modest 55% across the 12 states in the first two phases of the
elections. However, there have been a few surprises, like Andhra Pradesh, which
has recorded a turnout of over 68%. Analysts feel that Andhra Pradesh, with a
population of more than 70 million, may well turn out to be a key determinant
in deciding who India's next ruler could be.
Orissa comes in a notch lower with a 62% turnout. However, the biggest surprise
was Amethi (Uttar Pradesh), Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi's constituency. Despite
the Congress machinery being pressed into full service to garner support for
him, including his sister Priyanka Vadra's vigorous canvassing, the area
recorded a tepid 40% turnout.
Interestingly, according to poll pundits, the lowest turnout for any Lok Sabha
election in India was in 1952 (45.7%), while the highest - 64.1% - was
witnessed in 1985. The last elections in 2004 saw 58.1% of the electorate turn
up to cast their ballots.
Another unusual trend witnessed in this election has been the relatively better
(58%) voter turnout of middle and upper class voters in urban areas. This is in
direct contrast to past electoral traditions in India where it is usually the
economically weaker sections which come out in droves to vote while the rich
register abysmal turnouts of 40% or less.
Over the past four general elections since 1977, the trend has been that the
poor have invariably voted in greater numbers than the country's upper classes
with rural areas recording greater turnout than the urban pockets. This trend,
concede poll analysts, contrasts starkly with Western nations where political
participation - especially one's franchise - is taken very seriously by the
educated and the empowered sections of society.
High turnout or not, election 2009 has also been significant for another
reason: an unprecedented level of security with the deployment of over 3
million personnel to keep a strict eye on electoral proceedings. As a result,
elections have more or less been peaceful, with only a few sporadic cases of
violence. The only major trouble spots have been the Naxalite-affected areas of
Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, which witnessed the
killing of 19 people across 86 polling stations. Here, Maoists had called for a
boycott of the elections and carried out a series of attacks in mid-May.
Be that as it may, all eyes are now focused on May 16, when the poll results
will start trickling in after two more rounds of polling. As a single-party
government in India looks unlikely in the current scenario - with both the BJP
and the Congress likely to fall short of the requisite magic numbers to form a
government at the center - at least half a dozen smaller political parties,
representing India's multifarious regions, castes and sub-castes, are set to
lobby hard for key government positions. There is even a chance that one of
their leaders may become next prime minister. And as is entirely expected,
vigorous horse-trading will then commence for candidates who carry maximum
political weight.
But significantly, unlike past coalitions, this time political alliances will
be cobbled together only after all results have been announced. This will
further heighten the uncertainty about what kind of political permutation will
rule in Delhi. New alliances will need to be forged, and what cannot be
entirely ruled out is a third front - a conglomerate of non-BJP and
non-Congress parties - forming the government, leaving the two major national
parties wringing their hands.
But more than the power-broking, what will be of most concern to the Indian
electorate ultimately is the type of coalition government that will emerge out
of the current chaos and alphabetical soup of regional parties. The more
delicately poised the coalition, analysts say, the more cumbersome it will be
for it to make politically contentious choices.
Neeta Lal is a widely published writer/commentator who contributes to
many reputed national and international print and Internet publications.
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