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08-05-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI/ BARPETA: As India votes in a six-week general election, Narendra Modi’s image adorns everything from packs of rice handed out to the poor to large posters in cities and towns.
His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is relying on the prime minister’s popularity as it seeks a super-majority in India’s parliament. Its message: Modi has delivered economic growth, infrastructure upgrades and India’s improved standing in the world but as the Hindu nationalist party and its allies target 400 of the 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament up from 352 won in 2019, they are also employing local tactics in some vital constituencies they hope to wrest from the opposition.
Opinion polls indicate Modi will win a rare third term when voting ends on June 1 but only once in Indian history has a party crossed the 400 mark when the centre-left Congress party romped to victory following the assassination of its leader Indira Gandhi in 1984.
To examine how the right-wing National Democratic Alliance (NDA) aims to achieve that feat – and the obstacles it faces, media spoke to nine NDA officials, three opposition leaders and two political analysts, as well as voters in six opposition-held seats the alliance is targeting.
They identified three of the BJP’s key tactics: enlisting celebrity candidates to unseat veteran opposition lawmakers; making an assault on the opposition’s southern strongholds by appealing to minorities such as Christians; and exploiting redrawn political boundaries that bolster the Hindu electorate in some opposition-controlled areas in the north.
“A combination of strategies, organizational commitment and tactical flexibility will help make inroads in seats never held by the party ever before,” BJP President J. P. Nadda, who oversees the party’s election strategy, told Reuters in April.
Some critics have warned the BJP would use a large majority to push through a more radical agenda in a third term. While the BJP’s manifesto focuses heavily on economic growth, it has also pledged to scrap separate legal codes for religious and tribal groups in areas such as marriage and inheritance.
Many Muslims and tribal groups oppose the plan, which would require a constitutional amendment to be passed by at least two-thirds of parliament.
“Modi wants a landslide majority only to be able to end the debate and deliberation on any policy matter in the parliament,” Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge told Reuters.
Following low turnout in early voting, some BJP campaign officials have in recent days appeared less confident of securing a huge majority, though the party still expects to form the next government.
Modi’s party has criticized the dynastic politics that it says afflicts Congress, long dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi family but in Pathanamthitta, a seat in the southern state of Kerala, it is fielding a political scion in Anil Antony son of a veteran Congress leader.
Meanwhile, an Indian court extended the pre-trial detention of opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal until May 20 on Tuesday, legal news website Live Law reported, weeks before the capital votes in national elections.
The country’s financial crime-fighting agency arrested Kejriwal, a staunch critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 21 in connection with corruption allegations relating to Delhi’s liquor policy, charges his party has denied.
