New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi eyes a record-equaling third straight term in power amid the INDIA opposition bloc’s hope of springing a surprise as the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha election is set for Tuesday, bringing an end to a marathon polling exercise stretching over 80 days.
While most experts have long seen the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as the favourites in the polls, a lot is at stake for the ruling combine in terms of the scale of victory it can pull off and new territories it can conquer. The opposition’s stakes are higher still amid its reducing national footprint.
Exit polls have been, however, unanimous in their prediction that the NDA is closer to realising Modi’s ambitious target of ‘400-paar’ for his alliance than the INDIA bloc is to crossing even the 180 mark, one-third of the total number of seats.
In the run-up to the counting, the campaign acrimony between the two battling camps has spilled over into the post-poll trading of accusations after the exit polls predicted a massive win for the incumbent alliance, a forecast summarily dismissed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as ‘Modi media poll’.
INDIA bloc leaders, who have been raising doubts over the electronic voting machines (EVMs), have accused the prime minister of sending a signal to the bureaucracy through these ‘fantasy’ exit polls and marched to the EC, urging the poll watchdog to follow the counting guidelines.
In its counter-attack, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has accused its rivals of trying to undermine the integrity of India’s electoral process and asked the EC to prevent any attempt of ‘violence and unrest’ during the counting of votes.
The results will show if the Congress has it in its organisation and leadership to challenge the BJP amid its reducing footprint across the country since 2014. It has failed to get even the main opposition party status in two consecutive Lok Sabha polls and has been reduced to a pale shadow of itself in a number of states, especially in the Hindi heartland.
Its leaders, including president Mallikarjun Kharge and principal campaigner Rahul Gandhi, have claimed that their alliance will get 295 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha, marking an end of the Modi era.
Modi will equal the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s record of leading his party to three straight electoral victories if the BJP retains power.
Modi has spearheaded a concerted BJP push to gain further in strength in the two eastern states, where the party surprised everyone by emerging as the powerful second force in 2019, and the exit polls have suggested that it may topple the two regional parties from the top position in these polls.
Always confident of his return to power, Modi has already penned an article about his vision for the country, posted on ‘X’ about people’s support to the NDA and rejection of the opposition, and held a meeting with top officials on the ‘new government’s agenda’ for the first 100 days.
The verdict will also be out on a number of Union Ministers, including Piyush Goyal, Bhupender Yadav, Sarbananda Sonowal and Dharmendra Pradhan, all Rajya Sabha members asked by the BJP to contest the polls, and former Chief Ministers, such as the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Basavaraj Bommai, Trivendra Singh Rawat and the Congress’s Digvijay Singh and Bhupesh Baghel.
PNN & Agencies
