Interesting things are happening in the run-up to the lok Sabha election. There is one party whose senior leaders are desperately seeking excuses for not wanting to contest the poll. There is another party whose key leaders are falling head over heels to contest seats. And there is a third party which is paratrooping contestants by ignoring its cadre. Seen together, these incidents tell you how the results can shape up.
Many well-known Congress leaders from Tamil Nadu want to ‘devote' their time to ‘party work' instead of to face the people. They include Union Ministers P Chidambaram and GK Vasan and former Union Minister Jayanti Natarajan, among others. Their sudden love for party work has everything to do with the bleak prospects they face in the electoral battle. It is possible that the high command may eventually persuade some of these worthies, after this piece is written, to contest. But that will not change the reality that they know what lies in store for them. The Congress has no partners in Tamil Nadu. It has to contest on its own strength against the might of the DMK and the AIADMK. Add to this the challenge from the Bharatiya Janata Party which has tied up with the MDMK and could, as this goes in print, gain a couple more allies in the State, and you would know why the Congress leaders are jittery.
But it is not just Tamil Nadu where the party faces a rout that Congress stalwarts are reluctant to contest. Union Minister Manish Tiwari wanted to shift from ludhiana to Chandigarh, because he was apprehensive of the challenge he faces not just from the well-entrenched Akali Dal-BJP alliance and the Modi factor but also from Aam Aadmi Party candidate HS Phoolka. The well-known lawyer, who has courageously fought for justice to the victims of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi, is expected to make Tiwari squirm by bringing up the involvement of Congress leaders in the violence. Despite his best efforts, Tiwari could not escape ludhiana; the party has decided to throw him to the wolves from the constituency.
He may or may not emerge unscathed, but if he had got the green signal for Chandigarh, he would still not have had a safe passage. Model- actor Gul Panag is the AAP candidate. She does not bring political heft, but in these times when the Congress is struggling to stay afloat, even the opposition's glamour can hit the party hard — and Panag is all glamour for now. It is left to the supremely tainted Pawan Kumar Bansal to face her. It's a fight of the tainted versus the glamorous.
The Congress is not secure in Uttar Pradesh either. Non-achiever Member of Parliament Mohammed Azharuddin has adopted a new constituency, while the party had to fall back on another former cricketer Mohammed Kaif to contest from Phulpur, once represented by Jawaharlal Nehru. Raj Babbar has been brought to Ghaziabad because the party knew he could not retain Firozabad. Such is the despondency that senior Congress leader PC Chacko has admitted the situation is adverse for the party across the country.
The BJP has a different set of dilemma. Riding on the Modi wave in Uttar Pradesh, veteran leaders have dug in their heels in constituencies which they believe have benefitted the most from Narendra Modi's charisma. The irony is that some of these leaders reportedly did not want to vacate the seat even in Modi's favour. But that does the party's prime ministerial candidate no harm. He can chose any constituency from Gujarat and win handsomely — so can he from Varanasi. By the time this appears in print, it is possible that the contentious issue will have been resolved. Even elsewhere outside Uttar Pradesh, there is a clamour among candidates to contest, in contrast to the situation in the Congress where leaders have been attempting to flee the electoral battle-ground.
The AAP is on an unreal high, resulting out of the heady brew of a concocted grand expectation by the party nationally and of a poor performance of the BJP. No poll survey is giving the party any real chance outside Delhi. This explains why the likes of Shazia Ilmi have dug in their heels and refused to contest from Sonia Gandhi's constituency, Rae Bareilly. last heard, the doors had been shut in her face, after rank outsiders like Rajmohan Gandhi, Ashutosh and Ashish Khaitan got the tickets from the party's only real stronghold in the country. It would be a miracle if the AAP ends up with even seven seats across the country.
We should acknowledge the wisdom of Congress leaders who have seen the writing on the wall and salute the valiant ones that have decided, either voluntarily or after being issued a fait accompli by the party's high command, to face the people and be thrashed. Survey after opinion poll survey has been projecting a massive defeat for the Congress. Most of the findings are giving the party less than or just about three-digit numbers. The latest to give the humiliating piece of news for the party is the survey conducted by Hansa Research for NDTV. The television news channel, not known to have a soft corner for the BJP or harbour dislike for the Congress, let it be known to its viewers, in survey results spread over Thursday and Friday, that the Congress can well begin packing its bags, as it is expected to trail the BJP by an approximate margin of 1:2.
On Thursday, the survey results covered a total of 319 seats. Of these, the BJP-led NDA was projected to get 166 seats while the Congress-led UPA could end up with just 52. The BJP's share was 146 seats and the Congress's a mere 40. The AAP was a minuscule player nationally, getting a three per cent vote share. (Interestingly, the now ‘discredited' C-voter survey had some time ago given the party the most: Seven per cent, while CSDS and Nielsen projected four per cent to the fledgling but over-ambitious party.)
NDTV-Hansa Research had given the first installment of terrible news for the Congress on Thursday. On Friday, the channel released the final figures that should sink every Congressman's (and woman's) heart. The NDA ends up with a tally of 229 seats (the BJP's share is 195) whereas the UPA gets 129 (the Congress finishing at 106).
Another survey done by Taleem for Zee TV presents a not very different picture. The BJP is projected at 202-211 seats while the Congress ends up with 107-111 seats. 46.1 per cent of those polled preferred Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, and only 21.2 voted for Rahul Gandhi.
Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar had, in one of his rare sensible observations, recently said that the Congress was certain to lose the 2014 lok Sabha election. Going by the poll survey predictions that are pouring in, the defeat could surpass his expectations.