The Hindu Business Line : Maharashtra Assembly polls

The opinion polls give the Congress-NCP alliance more than an edge in the ensuing Maharashtra Assembly elections. If the combine wins the election, it would be in defiance of the anti-incumbency factor and would only strengthen and further stabilise the UPA Government at the Centre. Rasheeda Bhagat takes a look at the Maharashtra election scene.

The Congress President, Ms Sonia Gandhi, and the NCP leader, Mr Sharad Pawar ... A winning combination -- Vivek Bendre

WITH the Maharashtra Assembly polls scheduled for October 13, it is opinion poll season again. But the greatest irony is that the results of the two major polls conducted by two television channels — the NDTV-Indian Express and the AajTak-ORG Marg — will surprise none more than the Congress(I), which is leading coalition governments both at the Centre and in Maharashtra.

Soon after the elections were announced, senior Congressmen in both Mumbai and Delhi would concede in private that regaining Maharashtra seemed to be an uphill task. "Except for West Bengal and Bihar, we have seen again and again that voters tend to punish incumbent governments. So coming back to power in Maharashtra this time around would be very difficult," a senior Congress Minister in the Union Cabinet had said in an informal chat with select journalists hardly two weeks ago. So, he and his colleagues in the Congress(I) would be delighted, and shocked too, to find that both the opinion polls, though their findings are sharply different, give the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance, which runs the Democratic Front Government in Maharashtra, more than an edge in the ensuing elections.

The AajTak-ORG Marg poll, which surveyed 15,000 voters across 144 constituencies, has predicted a comfortable majority for the Congress-NCP combine, giving it a tally of 165-175 seats in a House of 288; 20 above the halfway mark. It predicts for the BJP-Shiv Sena combine 95-105 seats, way below the halfway mark, and a good 40 seats less than what the group had won in the last election.

But the findings of the NDTV-Indian Express opinion poll should make the Congress(I) more circumspect, coming as it does closer to its own expectation of the "uphill task", as it predicts a hung Assembly. The sample size of this poll was 30,364 — and according to the Indian Express, "it is the largest ever for a Vidhan Sabha election" — and it was done over 100 constituencies. This survey gives the Congress-NCP combine 132 seats (seven less than what the two parties, which did not fight the last Assembly election in coalition, had in the present House) and the BJP-Shiv Sena combine only 111 seats, 30 short of what it had managed last time.

If one assumes that the truth might lie somewhere in between, as it tends to do in such cases, clearly, the Congress-NCP combine is in an advantageous position. But the NDTV-Express poll analysis has made it clear that "the poll has a sampling error of 3 per cent and was conducted in the last week of September — before the candidates were announced and campaigning started."

This is an important caveat because the story of this election clearly is the huge number of rebels who are in the fray as independents from both the fronts. And this poll gives the `others' category as many as 45 seats, and it is clear that if this prediction is accurate, the rebels will form a sizable percentage of this category and will clearly be in the role of kingmakers in the case of a hung House.

But what has gone wrong for the BJP-Sena combine that was expected, even by its rivals in the Congress(I) camp, hardly a couple of weeks ago, to sweep the polls and regain power in the State?

The Democratic Front Government has had more than its fair share of scandals and other problems, which led to a change of chief minister in the Congress(I), and the accusations of involvement in the Telgi scam, resulting in the exit of Mr Chhagan Bhujbal as deputy chief minister from the NCP camp. The expectation in Mumbai all along has been that with such skeletons in its cupboard, the Democratic Front Government had no hope of returning to power.

But the rough and tumble of politics is such that potential winners often dig their own graves and this seems to have happened with the Shiv Sena, the senior partner in the saffron combine, as it is contesting 50 seats more than the BJP. Add to this the `son' factor, another common in Indian politics and it becomes clear why the BJP-Sena combine's fortunes have suddenly taken a dip.

First, there is the problem of the Shiv Sena being run as a fiefdom of Mr Bal Thackeray. But it is now becoming evident that the man who could bring not only Mumbai but also the entire Maharashtra to a halt with one strident call for a bandh or strike is not only aging but ailing too. The public rallies he was scheduled to address during this all-important election — important because it would test the saffron parties' ability to come back after the huge reverses the NDA faced in the Lok Sabha elections this May — were confined to four, but two of these have been cancelled because of his ill-health. A coronary bypass patient, there are reports that he has bouts of chest pain.

But it is much more than Mr Thackeray's poor health that is responsible for the sagging morale of the sainiks. Mr Thackeray has made it clear that his successor will not be his nephew Raj, as indicated a few years ago, but son Uddhav. The problem, however, is that compared to the more affable and accessible nephew, the son is elusive to the cadres and is seen to derive political mileage more by virtue of his genes than hard party work. The tussle between the two younger Thackerays has been evident for some time now, but the battle came out into the open this time with Uddhav's favourites getting ticket at the cost of Raj's nominees. The result is an unprecedented number of rebels in the fray in a party where dissent has been virtually unknown except as when Mr Chhagan Bhujbal left the party. And, even then, according to Sena insiders, he had to go into hiding for a while to escape the wrath of the Sena supremo's loyalists.

With the BJP too having its own share of rebels, the extent of the dissent brewing in the BJP-Sena camp becomes evident with the NDTV-Express poll showing the Congress-NCP winning as many as 24 of the 36 seats in the Mumbai region; three more than what it did in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls in these Assembly segments.

The BJP-Sena is expected to win only 10 seats in what is considered to be a Sena stronghold. But if the Sena is riddled with factions, things are not hunky-dory in the Congress-NCP camp either; there are rebels in fray from this combine too.

And the secular vote will once again be divided, as it was in the Lok Sabha polls with the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party, the Left parties and the Rashtriya Janata Dal putting in their candidates against the Cong-NCP combine.

But one concern of Indian politics which refuses to go away... in fact, it is getting more pronounced, is the number of candidates with criminal background in the fray.

The Maharashtra Election Watch has released statistics of such candidates and a report on NDTV showed Mr Gerson de Cuna of the MEW expressing concern at the high percentage of candidates with criminal background in the fray. Topping the list are Shiv Sena candidates, followed by the BJP, NCP and the Congress(I). But, then, this is hardly surprising in a State, particularly its capital Mumbai, where the underworld calls the shots in so many sectors.

If the Congress-NCP combine is able to win this election — and the Congress(I) President, Ms Sonia Gandhi, whose popularity ratings have soared and crossed that of the former Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as found by the NDTV-Express survey, is once again giving this election her best shot in terms of aggressive campaigning — it would be in defiance of the incumbency factor.

Whether on drought management, creation of jobs or providing a clean and efficient administration, the Democratic Front Government has hardly covered itself in glory. But, then, nothing succeeds like success; the Congress and its allies succeeded in the Lok Sabha elections and if it can swing the Maharashtra election too its way, it would only strengthen and further stabilise the UPA Government at the Centre. But whatever the outcome, one thing is crystal clear. The biggest flop of this election campaign is Ms Uma Bharti's Tiranga Yatra. The lukewarm response she got, with the BJP strongman in charge of Maharashtra, Mr Pramod Mahajan, giving her the cold shoulder during the yatra in the State, should make it evident to the BJP that its politics of hatred and religious hype is not managing to win it votes.

If this lesson is learnt, as it unfortunately was not after the Lok Sabha defeat, when strident voices in the BJP camp wanted the party to make its Hindutva stand more aggressive, it would help the party get more electoral gains and do a great service to communal peace and amity in the country.

(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)

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