The state, which has experienced increased bitterness and violence between the Trinamool Congress and BJP supporters, will see the greatest Staggered Assembly Survey till the date. The election in Assam will be in three phases, up from two in 2016, while Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry will have a one-day vote on April 6. The count of all assemblies will take place on May 2.
The elections are a test of strength for the BJP after prolonged agitation by farmers’ unions opposed to the new farm laws. Although states that go to the polls are largely unaffected by issues such as procurement and PEM, the resonance of the issues raised by PunjabThe Haryana and West UP agricultural unions will be closely watched as BJP defends the reforms as pro-farmer.
The polls will also put Congress to the test, as it has opted for an alliance in Assam with Badruddin Ajmal’s pro-minority AIUDF and has pacts with Left and DMK in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu respectively. He is the left’s main rival in Kerala, where he did well in the Lok Sabha polls. Shocked by the loss of his government in Puducherry just before the elections, Congress hopes to regain some position in alliance with DMK.
As of now, the left’s prospects appear to have improved in Kerala after congressional tactical missteps that saw it lose ground in the local body elections last year. However, the contest is usually closed. Tamil Nadu will not have stalwarts J Jayalalitha and M Karunanidhi in an assembly poll for the first time and MK Stalin will seek to seal his leadership in DMK with a victory that will make him prime minister.
In Assam, BJP seeks to ensure that its clean victory in 2016 was no fluke, although it now faces the combined challenge of Congress-AIUDF, which intends to consolidate anti-BJP votes. BJP, on the other hand, sees factionalism in Congress as a factor helping its cause, while it is seen as having the upper hand in the Bodo and Barak Valley areas. Your challenge lies in negotiating Citizenship Amendment Act potholes in a state where “illegal immigrants” are not an ethnic-religious dividing line.
With the Congress-DMK government losing office in Puducherry, BJP hopes that its alliance with former CM N Rangaswamy, considered a popular leader, will carry it out together with AIADMK.
Chief Elections Commissioner Sunil Arora, announcing the dates at a press conference, said that the decision to stagger the elections in West Bengal into eight phases, as opposed to six during the 2016 assembly elections (which were effectively seven phases, as the sixth phase was divided into two different dates) and seven phases in the 2019 Lok Sabha surveys – it was based on several factors. These factors, he said, included the availability and need for movement of the central paramilitary forces, as well as the “current type of charges and counter-accusations,” an apparent reference to the allegations of political violence made by the BJP against the Trinamool Congress and the counter-accusations of the latter.
“We have to find a kind of … middle exit,” he said, adding that an increase from seven to eight phases was not a big deal. To a particular question as to why voting in Tamil Nadu, where concern over the excessive use of monetary power had led to the termination of voting in some constituencies in the past, would take place in one phase and West Bengal in eight, the CEC recalled that Tamil Nadu had had a single-phase poll in the 2016 assembly elections, as well as the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
An EC official, while speaking to TOI, also pointed out that even in Assam, ruled by the BJP, the number of phases rose to three this time from two in the 2016 assembly survey.
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