As the 35-day voting process for the 2014 Lok Sabha election enters the final phase, the battle ground has shifted to the densely populated areas of eastern Uttar Pradesh, northwestern Bihar and southern West Bengal. The long-winding and highly acrimonious election campaign marked by several below the belt and personal attacks has left the country highly polarised.
In the ninth and final round of voting on May 12, a total of 6,61,31,802 voters will decide the fate of 606 candidates in 41 seats in the three crucial states. While 18 seats will go to polls in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar has 6 and West Bengal has 17.
The prominent candidates in Uttar Pradesh include Bharatiya Janata Party Prime Ministerial pick Narendra Modi and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal (both Varanasi), Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav (Azamgarh). Filmmaker and JDU candidate Prakash Jha (Paschim Champaran) and Rashtriya Janata Dal's Raghuvansh Prasad Singh (Vaishali) are the big names in Bihar while Trinamool Congress's Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Dinesh Trivedi, Sougata Roy, Dipak Adhikari (Dev), Tapas Paul, Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee, Communist Party of India-Marxist's Subhasini Ali and Asim Dasgupta are some of the big names in West Bengal.
Led by the charismatic Modi, the BJP started by promising clean, effective and a strong government but in the last few phases discarded the covert path of caste politics to take on its rivals head on. Picking up the "neech rajniti" comment by Priyanka Gandhi, Modi cleverly twisted it to attack the Congress and other opponents by alleging that they were stopping a person from the extremely backward caste from becoming the prime minister of India.
Challenged by strong regional leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar in Bihar and Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, the BJP has gone all out and used all the arsenal in its armoury ranging from development card, promise of a strong and effective government, wooing different castes and even raising the issue of illegal migration from Bangladesh.
The battle is multi-cornered in almost all the seats with the BJP, Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party and Congress fighting it out in Uttar Pradesh with Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal also in the race in Varanasi. In Bihar it is a fight between the BJP-LJP-RLSP alliance on one side and RJD-Congress-NCP on the other with the JDU-CPI trying to make it a three-horse race. The West Bengal race is a bit clear with Trinamool Congress in the lead followed by the Left Front and the Congress. The BJP remains a small player in the state despite Modi addressing a multitude of rallies.
For Modi, the biggest challenge is to convert the good show at his rallies into votes and seats while the regional players are trying to cobble up a respectable number of seats so as to remain relevant in national politics and to have a say in who forms the next government at the Centre after the results are announced on May 16 which will end the process that began on March 5 with the announcement of election schedule.
Out of the 18 seats in Uttar Pradesh, the ruling Samajwadi Party has six seats, BSP 5, BJP 4 and Congress 3. The ruling Trinamool Congress has 14 seats, while Congress, CPI and Independent have one each in the 17 seats of West Bengal. In Bihar, BJP and JDU have two each, while RJD and Independent have one each.
The country has already registered a record turnout of voters, surpassing the previous record in 1984, as 66.27 per cent voting was reported in 502 Lok Sabha seats where polling has been conducted in eight phases that began on April 7. The 2009 elections recorded a 57.94 per cent turnout.
Key Candidates
Uttar Pradesh:
Narendra Modi vs Arvind Kejriwal vs Ajay Rai - Varanasi
Mulayam Singh Yadav - SP - Azamgarh
Yogi Adityanath - BJP - Gorakhpur
Jagadambika Pal - BJP - Domariyaganj
West Bengal:
Sudip Bandopadhyay vs Rupa Bagchi vs Somen Mitra - North Kolkata
Nandini Mukherjee vs Subrata Bakshi - South Kolkata
Sugata Roy vs Asim Dasgupta vs Tapan Sikdar - Dum Dum
Sugata Bose vs Sujan Chakraborty - Jadavpur
PC Sorkar - Barasat
Bihar:
Raghuvansh Prasad Singh - RJD - Vaishali
Prakash Jha - JDU - Pashchim Champaran
Heena Shahab - RJD - Siwan
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