As the Assembly election battle enters the last lap, the campaign is getting fiercer

As the dates for Assembly election to five States steadily approach, the electoral arena is agog with activity in all quarters. The Election Commission is busy taking swift decisions aimed at ensuring maximum voter participation while making sure that all the stakeholders are kept out of harm’s way, lurking at every corner in the form of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the Coronavirus family. The political players, as is their wont, are busy raking up mud at their opponents and running one another down, and the candidates are leaving no stone unturned to woo the voters and weighing their options to switch allegiance to another party that may form the next Government in their State. From the looks of it, the BJP — which is in power at the Centre and in most of the States going to polls over the next 50 days — is under considerable pressure because it has the most at stake. Even central leaders such as Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have been forced to unleash their charisma in the hinterland as they well realise that it is the virtual semifinal before the 2024 general elections.

Of course, the saffron party is playing covertly, too, to ensure that it has the upper hand in political exchanges. After going through a series of setbacks in the shape of some of its OBC leaders recently joining the SP camp, it recently staged a coup of sorts when it took into the fold Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav’s daughter-in-law Aparna in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous and one of the most politically crucial States. Meanwhile, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav is deeply involved in a fierce battle of the ballot and pulling out all the stops to cement the place of his party in the Assembly and the Government. While the BJP is hesitant of naming any chief ministerial candidates, apparently for fear of triggering a factional feud, the young AAP has gone ahead and announced that its leader Bhagwant Mann would be the Chief Minister if the party comes to power in Punjab. To give it credit, the AAP national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal really went by people’s choice (or so he claims) after nearly 15 lakh people responded to the his party’s ‘Janta Chunegi Apna CM’ drive, in which the party had asked people to name their choice for the Punjab CM. With just days to go for voting, it’s really down to the wire.