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.

In other regions of the state too, there are reports of a tough contest, largely due to the presence of regional players like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Uma Bharti’s Bhartiya Jan Shakti (BJS). The BSP has fielded candidates on all the seats, while the BJS is contesting on 215 of the total 230 seats. The Lodhi community to which Bharti belongs can play a decisive role on at least 42 seats in the state.

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.

The BJP has also been trying to whip up public sentiments over the arrest of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and highlighting the UPA Government’s “dismal” performance on the terror front.

The Congress, on the other hand, has been harping on corruption issues involving ministers. It’s only intermittently that some central party leaders have talked about terror with alleged links to Sangh Parivar outfits.

While the BJP has earned considerable goodwill by focusing on infrastructure development, especially roads, it still does not appear to be enough to stave off anti-incumbency. Still, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s popularity remains relatively high. The BJP has been

seeking to encash on his personal charisma, with Advani calling him “Madhya Pradesh ka Obama”.