The results of the Assembly elections in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Manipur are coming in, and the news isn’t good for the Congress in the first two States. The Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP combine has dislodged Amarinder Singh, bagging 70 of the 117 seats. And the BJP has gone past the half-way mark against Narain Dutt Tiwari. In Manipur, it’s still early days.
Two States do not a Union make. And, as every loser hastens to point out, assembly elections are about local issues. Still is this a referendum on the performance of the central government? Is it a rebuff to Manmohan Singh, the country’s first Sardar prime minister, who was projected as the electoral posterboy of the Congress?
Is the 9 per cent growth figure that the PM has been tom-tomming as its big feat bogus, a bit like the India Shining fiction? Have rising prices and growing inflation played a more decisive role, than just plain anti-incumbency or bad governance?
Given the beating the BJP took in the May 2004 elections, and the wounds it has inflicted on itself since then, has the tide begun to turn against the Congress-led UPA? Could the BJP come back to power in the next general elections? And will that be a good thing?
congress will continue to suffer, if it allows corrupt species like karunanidhi, ‘ullu”prasad yadav to remote control central govt. manmohan singh’s anti -middle class policies have back fired. pity that person who once has not been directly elected to loksabha has become P M .
Once again its cycle time again. We keep changing the kings but the results are the same all over – the people remain poor and become further poorer!
Need not be. Do you think so.
will you stop aping Outlook? :P
By now people are clearly seeing the game the Congress plays of drawing a wool over their eyes. Yes, I think BJP is definitely on the comeback trail provided they play the cards well. The immediate challenge is UP where the elections have been announced. If they dent Mulayam’s hold they will be on the roll for ousting UPA govt in the next elections
Definitely Cong.on a hit list for their anti-Hindu policies. Now,the fundamental
BJP has a minority on their side-Sikh despite a first ever prime minister
from the community foisted by the congress. what does it mean. Congress
is neglecting all except Muslim and Christian and the majority community
feels sidelined in their own country. Even in UP it seems the fight would be
between BJP and SP/BSP combined. they will have understanding to finish
congress as Mayawathi and Mulayam sailing in the same boat now…
Hardly.
One swallow does not make a summer, nor does Assembly elections always mean anything in the national context.
As far as I am concerned, the BJP is in total disarray at the national level, reducing itself to a party of perennially bickering, mindless cretins. It has nothing substantial to offer apart from long discarded slogans, and is too busy rabble rousing to produce anything resembling an Opposition critique of the Government. It has happily ceded the role of an Opposition to an inept, backward thinking Left, by contriving to be even more inept and backward thinking.
On the national level, it represents nothing and no one, but its own interests (as defined as anything related to a BJP leader), and speaks in more voices than the BCCI.
Assembly elections are purely local affairs, and to think otherwise is to insult the electorate’s intelligence. Something the BJP learnt the hard way in 2004
In punjab, BJP’s hit rate is extremely good – won 19 out of the 23 seats it contested. A reason offered is that BJP contested all urban seats.
Earlier, in UP local body polls, BJP won 8 out of the 12 urban seats.
It is happy to see that in those places, people like communalism better than they like secularism and social justice :-)