As Madhya Pradesh votes today, all bets are out

The same evening in Indore, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L K Advani addressed a gathering at a half-full Dussehra Maidan. Although he was at his eloquent best lambasting the UPA Government for its failure to provide “job security” and “physical security”, there was a stream of people, though thin, moving out of the ground.

Rahul Gandhi’s public meeting on the same ground a day earlier witnessed similar scenes.

If rallies are an indication of the public mood and political tide in Madhya Pradesh, which goes to polls on Thursday, it is a tough call to say who will win this time.

Scales look evenly balanced in the Malwa region, a traditional BJP stronghold. The Congress could win only nine out of the 64 seats here last time.

While the BSP is generally believed to play a spoiler for the Congress by eating into its Dalit votebank, its new social engineering formula could hurt the BJP as well. In Gwalior-Chambal region, for instance, the BSP has fielded a number of Brahmin candidates.

On the other hand, the BSP is likely to eat into the Congress’s Muslim votebank. While the Congress has not fielded a Muslim candidate on any of the nine seats in Indore — where Muslims constitute about 15 per cent of the population — the BSP has fielded Iftikhar Munna Ansari from Indore III. And this seems to have struck a chord.

“Neither the Congress nor the BJP has fielded any Muslim candidate in Indore. How will they understand the Muslim problems then? Why can’t we see a third party like the BSP?” says Aziz Indori from Indore IV.

The BJP has been focusing on development, with the party’s advertisements comparing the first 50 years in the state with the five years of the BJP regime: 16 per cent interest rate on debts of farmers reduced to 5 per cent; 40,000 km of roads built since 2003 compared to 11,011 in the 10 years of Congress before that; over 6,000 MW power generation now against less than 3,000 MW earlier.

... contd.