It adds: “Accusing the Manmohan Singh government of undermining the autonomy of crucial institutions such as the Election Commission, Rashtrapati Bhawan and the CBI, BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley has promised that, if voted to power, his party would set up a commission of inquiry, to be headed by a Supreme Court judge, to investigate cases of collusion of the CBI with the accused in all sensitive cases and suggest steps to restore and re-establish the agency’s autonomy.”

Advantage BJP

In a piece titled “NDA the front-runner, BJP to emerge the largest party” R Balashankar writes: “The Indian voter has always been bountiful to the underdog. He hates to miss an opportunity to punish the haughty establishment that takes him for granted. He is not enticed or misled by propaganda, which money can buy. The Congress and its track-II campaigners in the media predicted an easy win for the incumbents even before the first vote was cast. After three rounds of the Lok Sabha poll it is an entirely different story.... But a senior Congress leader was so confident of forming the next government that he told this writer that the UPA will form the government just because the Congress has enough money this time. His logic was like this — Last time we were without enough money even to pay the electricity bill of our central office. We never expected to make it to the top. But this time round the scene has changed. We have funds to manage up to a hundred members”.

He further adds: “To me it looks like the Congress is meeting its Waterloo in all its traditional strongholds and it is not making any major inroads into the NDA turfs. Whereas the NDA led by LK Advani is holding on, if not improving in all the places where it fared better in the 2004 poll, and is making heady gains in the states which blessed the Congress in the last election. The fall of the Congress is more discernable than the gains the BJP is making because the fall is steeper. The game changers in this election are going to be Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. This is not psephology. In fact, the professional pollsters are refusing to stick their neck out. After talking to a cross section of political field workers and an extensive coverage of the country’s electoral canvass one is struck by a definite undercurrent that is bound to influence the outcome of the 15th Lok Sabha poll There is a widespread desire for change. Equally striking is the admiration for the NDA prime ministerial candidate LK Advani for his long and dedicated political career”.

Compiled by Suman K Jha