Counting on Oct 24; EC to announce Jharkhand Assembly election dates later
Exactly a month from now, BJP-ruled Maharashtra and Haryana will go to polls — the first election since the Lok Sabha elections and the Government’s key decisions on Article 370 and triple talaq.
While the polls in the two States will be held on October 21, the counting of votes will be held on October 24. The term of the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly ends on November 9 and that of the 90-member Haryana Assembly expires on November 2. The dates for Jharkhand Assembly polls will be announced later.
Faced with a string of high-profile desertions from their camps to the ruling combine in Maharashtra, the Congress and the NCP have joined hands once again after five years and have stitched up a seat-sharing deal in their bid to stop the BJP-Shiv Sena from returning to power. But then, the BJP and the Shiv Sena too have come together after 2014 to ensure they retain power. The two saffron parties are likely to announce their seat-sharing deal this week. The Congress and the NCP had been in power for three consecutive terms before they lost to the BJP-Sena combine in 2014.
In Haryana, the Congress is exploring a tie-up with the BSP, which has announced its intentions to go it alone and is also cut up with the principal Opposition party for having engineered a defection of six of its MLAs to join its camp in Rajasthan.
In both the States, the BJP is expected to espouse the cause of nationalism among the masses by pitching its “strong” decision to abrogate the special status to Jammu & Kashmir under Article 370. It would also point to its another “bold” decision of banning the triple talaq practice among Muslims to reach out to the women from the minority community.
Soon after the announcement of the poll schedule, leaders of the ruling coalition exuded confidence of winning a second consecutive term in Maharashtra with Devendra Fadnavis asserting he will be back as the Chief Minister. State BJP chief Chandrakant Patil said given the response to the “Mahajanadesh Yatra” of Fadnavis, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance is likely to get more than 220 seats.
With the BJP taking centre stage even in the Lok Sabha polls contested in 2014 and 2019, the Congress’ hold in its strongholds of Vidarbha, Marathwada and Mumbai region has weakened. Similarly, the NCP is struggling to retain its pocket-borough of western Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena has retained its base in Konkan.
The BJP and the Shiv Sena had swept the Lok Sabha polls in the State winning 41 of the total 48 seats. The NCP and the Congress won only five seats among them. The Congress and the NCP have decided to contest 125 seats each out of the total 288 seats in the polls.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi would again be the main face of the BJP poll campaign in Maharashtra, the Congress-NCP are taking up issues of farmers’ suicide, agrarian crisis and the rising graph of unemployment, highest in last 40 years, as its main attacking points against the BJP-Sena alliance in the State.
In contrast, the BJP, which has netted a number of NCP leaders, has attacked Sharad Pawar, saying his period of dominance is over. “Breaking and making parties” kind of politics practiced by the NCP chief is now catching up with his party with the passage of time, said Fadnavis in Mumbai, stepping up his campaign.
The BJP, which won 122 seats in the 2014 Assembly polls, had a vote share of 27.81 per cent, well ahead of the Congress’ 17.95 per cent.
In Haryana, disarray in the Opposition and internal fighting within State Congress may give the BJP a headstart in the campaign. The Congress high command’s capitulation to former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and replacing his arch rival Ashok Tanwar, a Rahul Gandhi appointee, as PCC president with Kumari Selja, has already weakened the Congress challenge in the State. Hooda had threatened to float a separate regional party if Tanwar was not removed as PCC chief.
As against this, the BJP has shored up its campaign by highlighting Prime Minister’s leadership and like in Maharashtra roped in many rival leaders including those from Congress and INLD in the State. The caste combination could also play favourably vis-à-vis the Congress which is presently seen as a divided house.
The non-Jat Manohar Lal Khattar’s BJP Government could sway Dalits, mainly ‘Jatavs’, towards the BJP in the light of traditional fear they have from the dominant ‘Jats’ in the State.
Khattar on Saturday said the Opposition is “divided” in the State and claimed that the BJP will win over 75 of the total 90 seats in the next month’s Assembly polls. He said that BJP’s relation with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is cordial in Haryana and the Central leadership will take a call on the fixing of number of seats for the SAD. He said tickets would be finalised before the start of nomination of papers.
In the 2014 Haryana Assembly elections, the Congress won only 15 seats with the BJP scoring a majority at 47 making 33 per cent of the vote share. The INLD emerged second ahead of Congress with 19 seats.
