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Already waiting for June 4!!
To some the only interest in the coming election is if Narendra Modi is going to equal the hat trick of Jawaharlal Nehru of coming to power for a third successive time
Polling officials collecting the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and other necessary belongings for the General Elections-2019, at the distribution centre, in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh on April 10, 2019 / PIB
It has been barely three days since the Chief Election Commissioner announced a seven-phase poll starting on Apr. 19 and the political noise has already begun, with or without loudspeakers. The political opposition is going hammer and tongs against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for having made a killing out of the electoral bonds, conveniently forgetting that they have made a decent pile as well. The numbers are all there to see especially after the Supreme Court dropped the hammer.
But will Electoral Bonds be an issue in the elections of 2024? Your guess is as good as mine especially when few have taken pains to see how a party “wins” by having a chunk of bonds bought by some company or some conglomerate. One argument put forth is that either companies bought these bonds after securing major government contracts or the purchase was some sort of an “insurance” to keep away the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) away from nosing around. Honestly, the last word is yet to be said on this and might take quite a while.
With the numerous polls that are doing the rounds, it is quiet mind boggling. One can imagine what it is going to be like when the counting starts on Jun. 4 and with all the zillions of exit polls making the airways. Mercifully rules are such that these exit polls cannot be put out earlier and rightfully so for prejudicing voters who are yet to show up at the hustings. In the United States, for instance, networks cannot call winners in East Coast time as it is a disincentive for folks in the West Coast who are three hours behind to even head to the polling centers.
To some the only interest in the coming election is if Narendra Modi is going to equal the hat trick of Jawaharlal Nehru of coming to power for a third successive time. But the political environments are quite different from Nehru to Modi. For more than two decades until 2014 it seemed to have been a foregone conclusion that India was left with only coalition governments and that too with a raft of political parties with various ideological hues making governance a challenge of sorts. In one way the 2000s saw the emergence of powerful regional parties and actors who were keen on leaving their imprint on the national scene.
Starting 2014 and by 2019 it became clear that single party rule was not something a thing of the past. The powerful rise of the BJP by itself and within the aegis of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has raised the question if the combined tally could cross the 400 mark out of 543 Lok Sabha seats in 2024. The BJP continues to place its bets on its traditional strongholds in the North—known as the Hindi-belt—even as it tries to make a mark or even break ground in states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The other aspect to watch on June 4 is the fortunes of the Congress Party that many regional powerhouses have placed their bets on.
The only thing that is going to matter is the poll on election day. This is the refrain in America which has its Presidential election on a single day except with the vagaries of opening and shut times in polling stations. For those in India going through a staggered process, the poll results start trickling in from 8am on Jun. 4. Happy Waiting!!
- Dr. Sridhar Krishnaswami is Editor-in-Chief of New India Abroad
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