Showing posts with label BJP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BJP. Show all posts

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Has India Gone Crazy?

How Citizenship Act, NRC will alter the idea of India, writes Barkha Dutt All of us will have to prove our Indianness. And the poorest and the Muslims will be the most hit ............. The government insists that the amended new law on citizenship (the Citizenship Amendment Act or CAA) is not anti-Muslim. In fact, it claims that Indian Muslims are not even impacted by the legislation. Its stormtroopers on social media have been deployed to vociferously argue that those criticising the revamped rules — I am among them — are begrudging fast-track protection to persecuted religious minorities from neighbouring countries. .......... About 1.9 million people found themselves excluded from the NRC in Assam, but these were not just Muslim migrants from Bangladesh — the suddenly stateless included lakhs of Hindus as well. What may now happen is something like this. The citizenship law will throw a protective shield over the disenfranchised non-Muslims; the Muslim migrants will then be left to appeal before the foreigners’ tribunals. The new law also offers legal immunity to non-Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan from jail, deportation and other criminal proceedings. In other words, the only people in internment centres will likely be Muslim migrants.............. For those who say that this does not impact India’s 200 million Muslim citizens, let me ask, how can you be untouched by the signalling that there is now a hierarchy of faiths among our people? ....... If refugees have been living in abject conditions of poverty and statelessness — and I myself have met Hindus from Pakistan living for decades in dismal conditions in Rajasthan — and deserve the magnanimity of the Indian State, that should extend to all of them, irrespective of their religion. It should include Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus and persecuted Rohingyas of Myanmar. And if our national policy is that illegal entrants are infiltrators, overrunning our land and culture, and stretching our already tight resources, then that too should apply to all of those who come into India without papers and documentation and visas. How can the BJP argue this both ways?......... In Assam, they want both the Muslims and Bengali Hindus who came in after 1971 to go back. In other parts of the east, there is similar hostility towards the Chakmas. In an area where there are more than 200 indigenous communities, ethnicity, language, and culture are as emotive, and, sometimes more, than religion. ........ begs the question. Why do it at all? Why create a crisis from two decades of peace; why fix what isn’t broken; why upend the very idea of nationhood that distinguishes India from its neighbours; and why bring religion into who can be Indian or not? ...... The CAA plus NRC equation will change not just the arithmetic but the very philosophy of India.



Modi's mandate was for double-digit growth rates. Modi's mandate was for a five trillion dollar economy. Modi's mandate was for economic development. This is social regression. This is going backward. At this pace, this is Modi's last term in office: Maharashtra shows the way. This is a gross misreading of the mandate. It is not about what you did or did not write in your manifesto. How many voters read your manifesto? Forget voters. How many of your BJP leaders read your manifesto? What you did to Kashmir, now you are doing to all of India. The social fabric of India will be in tatters at this pace.

The US is the richest country. And the US is incapable of deporting its 10 million-plus undocumented. India is less rich, to put it generously, and it has a much larger population. This attempt is bigotry outright. This is ill. This is about marginalizing the marginalized. This is cruel.

The political "genius" here is to create a refugee crisis, the largest in the world, where none exists.

If this bill is unconstitutional, its opponents need to mount a legal challenge, instead of only issuing press releases. And the political blowback needs to happen. Modi is clearly steering India back to its "Hindu growth rate" days.

‘Rahul Jinnah’ a more appropriate name for you: BJP hits back at Rahul Gandhi Veer Savarkar is revered as a Hindutva icon for the BJP but is accused by its rivals of tendering apologies to the British government to secure release from jail when India was under colonial rule. ....... Addressing the Congress’ mega “Bharat Bachao Rally” at Ramlila Grounds in the national capital, Gandhi had turned down the BJP’s demand for an apology for his “rape in India” comment, saying his name was Rahul Gandhi not Rahul Savarkar, and that he would never apologise for speaking the truth.

Citizenship Amendment Bill: India's West Bengal hit by protests
Violent clashes continue in India over new citizenship bill Protests spread to Delhi as BJP government accused of making Muslims second-class citizens
India just redefined its citizenship criteria to exclude Muslims With a new law — and massive new detention camps — the country is undermining its status as a democracy....... India is home to 200 million Muslims. ...... The legislation turns religion into a means of deciding whom to treat as an illegal immigrant — and whom to fast-track for citizenship. ...... When the NRC was published in August, around 2 million people — many of them Muslims, some of them Hindus — found that their names were not on it. They were told they had a limited time in which to prove that they are, in fact, citizens. Otherwise, they can be rounded up into massive new detention camps and, ultimately, deported. ...... So far, this measure affects potentially 2 million people, not all 200 million Muslims in India. However, Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said it plans to extend the NRC process across the country....... Muslims have faced increasing discrimination and violence over the past few years under Modi’s BJP. But the one-two punch of the NRC followed by the CAB takes this to a new level. The country is beginning to look less like a secular democracy and more like a Hindu nationalist state. .......

If the Indian government proceeds with its plan, in a worst-case scenario we could be looking at the biggest refugee crisis on the planet. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom have all warned that this could soon turn into a humanitarian disaster of horrifying proportions.

...... Shashi Tharoor, whose Congress party opposes the CAB, dubbed it “fundamentally unconstitutional.” ..... Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit priest and human rights advocate, said in an emailed statement that by “assuring citizenship to all undocumented persons except those of the Muslim faith, the CAB risks ... destroying the secular and democratic tenets of our revered Constitution.” ...... India’s Constitution guarantees everyone equality under the law. Religion is not a criterion for citizenship eligibility, a decision that goes all the way back to the 1940s, when India was founded as a secular state with special protections for minorities like Muslims. ....... Harsh Mander, a noted rights advocate of Sikh origins, wrote that the CAB represents “the gravest threat to India’s secular democratic Constitution since India became a republic.” He said that if the bill becomes law, he’ll declare himself a Muslim out of solidarity. Meanwhile, he’s also calling for Indians to fight the CAB with a nationwide civil disobedience movement. ...... Already, protests are underway. In Assam’s capital, authorities have shut down the internet and implemented a curfew. ................ “The idea of India that emerged from the independence movement,” said a letter signed by more than 1,000 Indian intellectuals, “is that of a country that aspires to treat people of all faiths equally.” But this bill, the intellectuals said, is “a radical break with this history” and will “greatly strain the pluralistic fabric of the country.” ......... The US Commission on International Religious Freedom said India is taking a “dangerous turn in the wrong direction,” adding that the US should weigh sanctions against India if it enshrines the bill in law. ......... The only hope for those who oppose it is that it will be struck down in court on the grounds that it’s unconstitutional. ........ Those in Assam whose names do not appear on the NRC have been told the burden of proof is on them to prove that they are citizens. But many rural residents don’t have birth certificates or other papers, and even among those who do, many can’t read them; a quarter of the population in Assam state is illiterate........... Residents do get the chance to appeal to a Foreigners’ Tribunal and, if it rejects their claims to citizenship, to the High Court of Assam or even the Supreme Court. But if all that fails, they can be sent to one of 10 mass detention camps the government plans to build, complete with boundary walls and watchtowers. ........ The first camp, currently under construction, is the size of seven football fields. Even nursing mothers and children will be held there. “Children lodged in detention centers are to be provided educational facilities in nearby local schools,” an Indian official said. ....... If the detainees in the camps end up being expelled from India — and that is the government’s plan — this could constitute a wave of forced migration even greater than that triggered by Myanmar in 2017, when hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims were displaced........ And it’s not clear where the newly stateless people would go. Neighboring Bangladesh has already said it won’t take them. All this has induced such intense anxiety that some Muslims are committing suicide........ Under Modi, vigilante Hindus have increasingly perpetrated hate crimes against Muslims, sometimes in an effort to scare their communities into moving away, other times to punish them for selling beef (cows are considered sacred in Hinduism). And this summer, Modi erased the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, which had previously enjoyed considerable autonomy over its own affairs. ........ “These infiltrators are eating away at our country like termites,” BJP president and home minister Amit Shah said at an April rally. “The NRC is our means of removing them.” Shah has openly said the goal is to deport those who are deemed illegal immigrants...... Last month, Shah said the government will conduct another count of citizens — this time nationwide. This could be used to clamp down on Muslims throughout India, potentially triggering a huge humanitarian disaster.



India passes controversial citizenship bill that excludes Muslims
India Passes Controversial Citizenship Bill That Would Exclude Muslims

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Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Indian Democracy: Maharashtra Edition

Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress will work out formula for govt formation: Uddhav Thackeray Uddhav also took a dig at governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari over imposition of the President's Rule in the state.
Maharashtra political impasse: Uddhav Thackeray meets Sharad Pawar in Mumbai
Congress holds key to 'non-BJP' govt formation in Maharashtra The Sena is the second largest party in the 288-member House with only 56 MLAs after the BJP (105)
No decision on supporting Shiv Sena yet: NCP, Congress "We (Congress and NCP leaders) discussed the nitty gritty of a (possible) common minimum programme to ensure the government functions smoothly"
BJP blames Shiv Sena for imposition of President's rule in Maharashtra
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Thursday, May 23, 2019

Modi's Second And Bigger Victory






No matter which way you look at it, it is just plain remarkable. Modi has managed to take his tally to almost 350. I have a feeling, by 2024, that tally might inch towards 400. The Congress Party needed a sympathy wave in 1984 to be in that 400 range. Modi is depending on his work, his organization, the electorate's intelligence.

India 2019: Looks Like A TsuNAMO

The terror attack in Kashmir and the Indian response to go deep inside Pakistani territory to wipe out a camp of terrorists sure played a role. That created a sympathy wave. But that was the icing on the cake. This dude has been doing the work.

He is a risktaker. 2014-2019 was the hard part. The next phase is not necessarily easier. But I would argue it is relatively easier. He does not need to give the Indian economy another shock therapy like demonetization.

Modi is an excellent communicator. He has a full agenda. I think he would be smart to co-opt Rahul Gandhi's Universal Basic Income idea for the bottom 20% and make his own. It is a sound idea. Automation will only accelerate. That has to be allowed. The productivity gains have to pay in the form of Value Added Tax. And that VAT has to fund the UBI.

Indira Gandhi nationalized the banks. Indian banks are state-owned. In that way India is China. But when you have as much corruption as there has been in India, and for such a long time, you end up with a huge pileup of non-performing loans, which drags down the economy's prospects. Some clean-up has been done. Much more remains to be done. Funneling credit to the small and medium enterprises, and the mom and pop stores, that are the dynamo of the economy is where job creation is. That has to be a top priority.

Sometime in the next few years, Modi has to take India to double-digit growth rates. That is the only way it can someday catch up to China. China growing at 5-6% and India growing at 10-11% is how. At this stage, 5-6% is excellent for China. But India can only truly reap its demographic dividend by growing at double-digit growth rates.

India is such a vast and diverse country. And it is a vibrant democracy. Everybody has an opinion. When Indians go grocery shopping, they haggle. It is free speech in action. To take major steps of reform while also dancing to the tunes of the electoral rhythms is a challenge. Modi is excellent at it. He is gifted. He is hard working. (The guy does not sleep.)

Overall I am optimistic that Modi will keep delivering. But the political path is bound to be full of surprises.

Adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), India is projected to have become a larger economy than the US by 2030. It is befitting that that happens on Modi's watch. That is the projection. Modi has the option to accelerate it. The projection puts India at number two, and China at number one.

Chandrababu Naidu's move a few years ago to walk out of the NDA, in hindsight, looks like was a bad move. He has been wiped out, in his own state, and at the national level. One worries for the city of Amaravati.

West Bengal will fall. It will fall into the BJP's lap. That is the trend.

Modi basically repeated his 2014 performance in the Hindi heartland. That is quite a statement.

The BJP is the largest political party in the world.








Make in India should be aligned with a revamped Foreign Trade Policy to capture export market share amid ongoing dislocations in production base on the back of geopolitical uncertainty like trade wars and Brexit

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India 2019: Looks Like A TsuNAMO

90 minutes into the vote counting, and it is beginning to look like a massive victory for Narendra Modi. If he pulls a hattrick and wins again in 2024, he joins the rank of the Congress Party's Nehru. This is happening after a long time in India that a party with a majority is winning another five-year term. He should be able to give India double-digit growth rates before he goes to the people again in 2024.





3:30 AM EST Update



My Projection Puts Modi At 300-350

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Thursday, May 16, 2019

India 2019: Congress Not Wanting PM Position Is A Game Changer

"Central Role" For Rahul Gandhi In Forming New Government: Tejashwi Yadav
Rahul Gandhi's Hands-On Solution After Helicopter Glitch In Himachal
Congress not averse to supporting regional party leader for PM post: Ghulam Nabi Azad
TRS not averse to go with Congress, if PM is regional
Lok Sabha Elections 2019: PM Modi Is "Losing And Is Desperate", Says Congress Leader Salman Khurshid He said, "He is changing course because he is desperate. He knows he is losing and he is desperate. You just compare the last campaign with this campaign. He was in control of that campaign but he is not in control of this campaign."
Lok Sabha Elections 2019 Highlights: Sonia Gandhi Writes To Party Leaders For May 23 Opposition Meet

The Congress declaring it does not necessarily want a PM from the Congress party is a game changer. That vastly expands the possibilities of UPA-4. It will become harder for the BJP to pull in a few more parties even if it is near something like 250. Some current members of the NDA like Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan might desert the NDA if push comes to shove.

But the Congress supporting from the outside drama should not be enacted. Whoever comes to power should give a full five-year term. PM or no PM the Congress must participate in the government.

Step one has to be to form the coalition, UPA-4. This is a new, expanded coalition. Then those aspiring for leadership should come forward, and the pool of MPs should vote, in two rounds if necessary. That would be the most stable way to do it. Backroom consensus building is b.s. And each party's strength would get reflected in the cabinet. So the Congress would get the largest number of ministers.

I would think Rahul Gandhi would be most suitable for Convenor of the coalition, and the best person to serve as PM would be Chandrababu Naidu, who just so happens to be the most senior politician in the country.

This move by Congress is not necessarily magnanimous. No matter what happens, the Congress by itself will be much smaller than all the smaller parties combined. This is just respecting arithmetic. This is basic democracy.


Convenor of UPA-4: Rahul Gandhi
Prime Minister: Chandrababu Naidu
Defense Minister: Mayawati
Telecommunications Minister: Akhilesh Yadav

Naidu because he could give India double-digit growth rates.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2019

India 2019: May 23 Looks Mysterious

Nobody really seems to know what is going to happen. Of course, the political parties will say they will get a thumping majority. Both the BJP and the Congress are going to say that. It is in their self-interest to say that. Also, it is in the interest of the TV stations to make you feel like this is going to be a nailbiter, a really close election. It is because they want you to watch TV. If one or the other party is the clear winner, why bother following the news on TV, right? Pollsters are notoriously off the mark in India. They can't reach people they need to talk to. Those they talk to deliberately throw them off balance. Those who get polled mostly say what they think the interviewer wants to hear. In India, your average citizen is also a politician like that.

Which is kind of cool, though. You just have to wait and see what it is going to be on May 23. That works.



The predictions basically revolve around Modi, though. If he does better than last time, of course, he will get five more years. If he fares worse but still gets a majority, of course, he will get to continue. If the NDA he leads ends up in the 250 zone, about 23 less than needed, Amit Shah might be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat. He could add a few more parties to the support base. Maybe 240 is also doable. But as soon as that number dips towards 200, people start seeing a new Prime Minister. That is the sum of the predictions that I have seen.

Indian federal elections are to democracy what World Cup Soccer is to the world of sports. It is the biggest show on earth. And it is quite fascinating.

Modi's Escape Hatch: Orissa, Telangana, Tamilnadu
The Modi Suspense
India 2019: A Fractured Mandate?
My Projection Puts Modi At 300-350
Modi And Rahul
Could Arithmetic Force Modi And Rahul To Team Up?
India 2019: The Scenario Of A Federal Front Lead
Modi Expecting A Larger Victory Than 2014
India 2019: The Suspense
India 2019: Some Projections
The Indian Election: Hard To Predict
Modi Interview In Varanasi
Amit Shah: Master Strategist
Excellent Non-Political Interview Of Modi By Akshay Kumar
Modispeak
Imran Khan Could Bring Peace

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Saturday, May 11, 2019

My Projection Puts Modi At 300-350

My projection puts the Modi-led NDA at 300-350. And if he gets another five years, he will be unbeatable in 2024. The Indian economy is projected to have become larger than the US economy by 2030, adjusted for purchasing power parity. I can imagine Modi being Prime Minister in 2030 when that happens.

Modi has clearly spoken against hate crimes. And there are laws in India against hate crimes. Those laws have to be actively enforced.






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Modi And Rahul

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Friday, May 10, 2019

Could Arithmetic Force Modi And Rahul To Team Up?

What the final tally will be is anybody's guess right now, but let's say this is how it rolls: "...the post-poll scenario will be dictated by regional parties that will climb back to the pre-2014 situation with 223-225 seats.......my estimate is that BJP’s tally will be around 170-180, down from 282 in 2014 and Congress’ may rise to 140-150, which will be phenomenal from 44 in 2014 ..... "

 BJP and allies: 170-180
Congress and allies: 140-150.
Federal Front: 200-220

Most people might suggest this means the Federal Front will get the Prime Minister with outside support from the Congress. But then no regional party might get more than 30 MPs.

Another option would be for the BJP and the Congress to come together with Modi as Prime Minister and Rahul Gandhi as Deputy Prime Minister. That might be a more stable government. In a democracy, you respect the people's verdict. Modi has made remarkable progress on issues like ease of doing business and infrastructure, whereas Rahul Gandhi has come up with the wonderful idea of a Universal Basic Income for the bottom 20% of the people. Country above party, as both like to say.




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Tuesday, May 07, 2019

India 2019: Some Projections

Scenario 1: The BJP led alliance falls short of the halfway mark and quickly pulls in a few regional parties to form a majority. This was the talk of the town yesterday.

Scenario 2: The BJP improves on its tally from 2014. This might not be likely.

Scenario 3: The BJP does less well than in 2014 but still manages to cross the majority mark and forms another government for five years.

Scenario 4: The arithmetic is tri-polar: the BJP led alliance, the Congress-led alliance which is much smaller, and the non-BJP, non-Congress Federal Front alliance which asks the Congress for outside support to form a government.

Right now scenario one seems to be in the air. People are talking about it. But nobody knows for sure.

Somebody like the Orissa chief minister Patnayak might be willing to support the BJP led alliance in the case the need arises.




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Thursday, March 21, 2019

Who Will Win India 2019?



A national election in the world's largest democracy is quite an event. It goes on for weeks for one. The campaign itself lasts only a few weeks. It is not a year-long lurch like in the US. But then, at some level, the campaign is never over. There is always a major election right around the corner somewhere in India. Only a few months back the Congress elbowed the BJP out of power in three major states. But then the Pakistan-India ruckus happened, and that was advantage BJP, politically speaking.

Polls are notoriously off in India. Poll numbers have missed the mark consistently over the last several elections. It might be because the majority of Indian voters are out of reach for pollsters. In the 2014 election, the BJP performed much better than any poll had forecast. It ended up with a comfortable majority. It was a replay of the Rajiv Gandhi victory for Congress in 1984.

What will happen this time? It is hard to tell. Has Modi delivered? Yes and no. The land reform and the labor market reform that might have upped job creation were both opposed and successfully, despite Modi throwing his weight behind them. Major work has been done on the infrastructure front. India has climbed up in the ease of doing business index. The jump is huge. Through his relentless travels, Modi has put India on the global map.

But then Atal Bihari Vajpayee lost in 2004. It looked like he might win.

Right now looks like the BJP led alliance, the NDA, will win, and Modi will come back as Prime Minister. But should that not happen do not expect Rahul Gandhi to become Prime Minister. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties will want someone like Mamata Banerjee or Chandrababu Naidu to take the lead. But Modi is still the most popular politician in India by a wide margin. He does not seem to have competition.


NDA to win majority with 283 seats in 2019 Lok Sabha Polls: Times Now-VMR survey
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is likely to come to power with a majority on its own, an opinion poll by Times Now-VMR completed after the Balakot air strikes has predicted. The survey predicted the NDA to get as much as 282 seats - 10 over the halfway mark - leaving the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance ( UPA) way behind with 136 seats. Other parties which include the SP-BSP-RLD and non aligned parties like the BJD, Telangana Rashtriya party and YSR Congress could end up with 136. The predicted tally for the NDA is 54 seats less than what it got in 2014.























Math Over Popularity In UP, Edge For Gathbandhan: Prannoy Roy's Analysis
the Mayawati-Akhilesh Yadav combo alone could bring down the NDA score in the state from 73 to 37, even if Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity is at the level of the 2014 national election....... The addition of Congress to the mix could have deducted another 14 seats from the NDA tally, reducing it to 23 seats, data shows.
Lok Sabha polls: Modi-BJP show all the way, no chance for Rahul Gandhi as PM, predicts satta bazaar
The satta bazaar predicts 55 seats for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh
The Man Who Predicted 2014 Indian Election Reveals Who Will Take The Throne In 2019
The last election was not about the party but the leader. Similarly, the 2019 election will also be about the leader. The seasoned people are talking about party politics while the youth is focused on the leader ..... the world will be ruled by four nationalist Narendra Modi, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu. ....... I am picking data from rural India. How many families have benefited from the cooking gas and electricity? How many have got access to toilets and how many kids are going to school now? When I study this I am getting a figure of fifty crore. Even in forty-fifty crore, being a conservative I divide it by two, it is twenty crore. You know in 2014, the elections were won by a small margin of 1.4 crore and here you have a larger swing. So my calculation says 2019 belongs to Modi.
Why India's Pollsters Will Have A Tough Time Predicting Election 2019 In the last three elections, opinion polls have been significantly off the mark.
in the last three elections, polls have been significantly off the mark. In 2004 and 2009 the victorious Congress alliance was completely underestimated, while in 2014 only Bajaj’s firm predicted the BJP would win an outright majority. ..... if two regional parties already in alliance joined forces with the main opposition Congress, the BJP would be wiped out in the state, almost certainly losing power nationally.
BJP will lose seats but win 2019 Lok Sabha polls, says survey August 21, 2018
According to the India Today’s Mood of the Nation (MOTN) July 2018 poll, the NDA will be back in power with 281 seats, nine seats ahead of the half-way mark in the 543-member Lok Sabha. However, but the BJP will lose its majority and slide down to 245 seats. The UPA will be far behind with 122 seats and the Congress will increase its tally to 83 seats. ..... The BJP, according to the poll, will come down from the 282 seats it had won in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections but will increase its vote share from 31.34 per cent to 36 per cent. ..... The Congress, on the other hand, will increase its seat tally from the 44 it won in 2014 to 83 seats, while its vote share will go up from 19.52 to 31 per cent...... The ‘Others’, who are basically fence-sitters, are predicted to get a whopping 140 seats with a 33 per cent of the vote share in the Lok Sabha. ...... Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to be the favourite for the top job with 49 per cent of the respondents rooting for him while 27 per cent of the respondents favoured Congress President Rahul Gandhi for the post.
Prashant Kishor's PM Prediction for 2019 Polls Will Have BJP Cheering
Prashant Kishor said on Monday that Narendra Modi would return as the Prime Minister after Lok Sabha polls ..... A resident of Buxar district in the state, Kishor shot to fame in 2014 when he managed the poll campaign for Narendra Modi, then the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, which went on to put up its best-ever electoral performance....... A year later, he collaborated with Kumar who returned to power for his third consecutive term after registering a handsome victory in the assembly polls...... Among NDA constituents, the JD(U) is the third largest after the BJP and the Shiv Sena.
2019 Elections in India: Modi Won't Have It Easy January 3, 2019
Contrary to the traditional political punditry that the 2019 elections would be a ritual to re-elect the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the miraculous return of the opposition Indian National Congress (INC) under Rahul Gandhi in state elections has thrown a major spanner in Modi’s works. ...... The INC has thrashed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh (114 of 230 seats), Rajasthan (99 of the 200 seats) and Chhattisgarh (68 of the 90 seats), which account for 65 seats in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of India’s bicameral parliament). In the 2014 general elections, the BJP had won 62 of these 65 seats. ........ When the BJP swept to power in 2014, winning 282 of the 543 seats, it became the first political party in thirty years to win an outright majority in India. ...... The regional and sub-national parties will the x-factor in India’s 2019 election. They would be the kingmakers who will be critical in determining who forms the next government.
Inside India's Colossal, Colorful, Tough-to-Predict Election
India’s elections have been notoriously difficult to predict because of the endless possibilities of coalitions. ...... In 2014, the Election Commission of India deployed 3.7 million polling staff, 550,000 security personnel, 56 helicopters and 570 special trains to conduct a five-week-long exercise in close to a million polling stations. ...... The commission sets up a polling booth for a lone voter in the Gir forest in western state of Gujarat, where lions roam. It also protected a polling station in Chhattisgarh by deploying a medical team to prevent a swarm of honeybees attacking voters....... now 430 million Indians own a smartphone, half a billion use the Internet, 300 million use Facebook, 200 million send messages on WhatsApp and 30 million are on Twitter. It means political parties and candidates will aggressively use new technology and social media to win the hearts and minds of young voters.
Why opinion poll predictions are drifting away from reality
View: Nobody knows anything about India's huge elections
The last elections, in 2014, threw up a result that had been unthinkable for three decades: a clear majority for one party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. While repeating that mandate isn’t impossible, it will be extremely difficult. The BJP doesn’t have much of a presence outside the north and west of India and, for its majority in 2014, it had to win almost all the seats in which it was competitive. In the end, Modi himself only won a little more than 30 per cent of the vote. ...... This time around, Modi faces a more difficult task. Memories of the Congress years have faded. And his own performance as prime minister has been, at best, underwhelming. Government officials may claim that India is growing faster now than it ever has, but few people believe that. What everyone knows is that jobs are hard to come by and that farmers in particular are suffering. ....... He has never stopped campaigning. In 2014, he was an exciting novelty; in 2019 he is an institution. His face is everywhere, on walls and in newspapers, above reminders of one government welfare program or another. He has a radio show, his government can count on support from tame television channels and, of course, he still has Twitter. ..... voters aren’t pleased with the state of the economy or with the BJP’s administrative skills. ..... Few outside Modi’s own circle believed that he would win a majority in 2014. In 1999, the BJP won fewer seats -- after a border skirmish with Pakistan -- than predicted. In 2004, the BJP government was unexpectedly voted out. And, in 2009, the Congress increase in seat strength startled pretty much every observer. ..... Nobody ever knows quite what the Indian electorate will produce on counting day.
Will BJP win Lok Sabha polls 2019? Here's what top pollsters predict
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