India’s election enters second phase: Four crucial states to watch

NEW DELHI — Indians in 13 states and federally-governed territories started voting Friday in the second phase of the seven-part general election, with all eyes fixed on politically crucial states that will play a key role in the formation of the next government.

More than 1,200 candidates are in the fray in this phase, in which nearly 90 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, are being contested. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is eyeing a rare third straight five-year term in power in the South Asian country. Voting will run through June 1, and the tallying of ballots will be on June 4.

Here are four of the states with the largest constituencies that will help shape the country’s political future for the next five years. India has a total of 28 states and eight federally governed territories.

Uttar Pradesh

It is often said in Indian politics that the road to New Delhi, the seat of government, passes through Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, which lies in the north and is home to more than 240 million people. If it were a country, it would be the fifth-largest by population, after Indonesia. Uttar Pradesh’s 80 seats in the Lok Sabha are the most by far, and it is voting in all seven phases of the elections.

A party or coalition needs a simple majority of 272 seats to form a government. Modi’s BJP easily crossed that magic figure single-handedly in the last two general elections, especially aided by its impressive showing in Uttar Pradesh.

In the 2019 elections, the BJP won 62 seats in Uttar Pradesh, a fifth of the party’s total of 303, highlighting the importance of keeping control of the state. Uttar Pradesh, whose state government is also controlled by the BJP, gave another two seats to BJP ally Apna Dal (Soneylal), helping propel Modi to the position of prime minister for the second time and cement the hold of his party over the state. The country’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, won only a single seat in the bellwether state.

“I have come here to seek your blessings for a developed India,” Modi told a rally in Agra in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday. “Some forces don’t like India’s rising power … and that’s why they have come together against Modi,” he said, referring to the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), a coalition of over two dozen parties, including Congress, formed last year to take on the BJP. He called upon people to bring back his government in these elections “for stopping these forces, for a bright future of the country and for security of the country.”

Maharashtra

India’s richest state in the west, whose capital of Mumbai is the financial hub of the country, accounts for the second-highest number of Lok Sabha seats, 48, and is voting in the five of the seven phases.

In 2019, the BJP won 23 seats in Maharashtra, and a regional ally at the time, the Shiv Sena party, bagged another 18, dominating the results in the state. But a few months later, Shiv Sena — which like the BJP draws support from its traditional Hindu voters — joined hands with the Congress party and others to oust Modi’s party from the state government. The regional party later split into two in mid-2022, with its major faction rejoining the alliance with the BJP and forming a new coalition government in the state.

The BJP continues to bank on Modi’s charisma to repeat its previous poll performance in the state.

Addressing a rally in Amravati in Maharashtra on Wednesday, Amit Shah, a close Modi aide and India’s home minister, exhorted the voters to support the BJP: “When you vote for the lotus (the symbol of the BJP), it means that each and every vote of yours will result in Narendra Modi becoming the prime minister again, the country getting rid of terrorism … and India becoming the third-largest economy.”

West Bengal

This eastern state bordering Bangladesh and Bhutan has 42 Lok Sabha seats and is voting in all seven phases. West Bengal is the only Indian state that has a woman as chief minister, Mamata Banerjee. She is the head of the Trinamool Congress Party (TMC), part of the INDIA opposition coalition. The party, though, has not agreed to any seat-sharing arrangement with allies in the state in the current elections.

The BJP has been able to make significant inroads into the state, where it improved its tally to 18 in the 2019 elections, jumping from the just two seats it secured in 2014. The TMC bagged 24, down from 34, and Congress slipped to two from four, while other parties drew a blank.

While the BJP is looking to further strengthen its position in West Bengal, targeting the TMC over issues like corruption in the state, Banerjee has claimed that the party is not just “anti-Bengal,” it is, “in essence, anti-people,” saying that its manifesto does not mention “a word about people’s basic necessities” such as food, clothes and shelter. She said that the party has instead prioritized the implementation of “draconian policies” like a citizenship law seen by critics as anti-Muslim and the Uniform Civil Code, which aims to replace religion-specific civil laws with the same set of rules for everyone.

The BJP “poses a threat to the very soul of democracy and cooperative federalism,” she posted on X, formerly Twitter, on April 16, urging people to vote for her party to “save” the country and the constitution.

Bihar

With 40 seats in its kitty, the eastern state of Bihar is also voting in all seven phases.

In the 2019 general election, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept the polls in the state, winning 39 seats and handing a crushing defeat to an opposition bloc that included Congress.

The state chief minister, Nitish Kumar of Janata Dal (United), earlier this year exited the INDIA alliance, though he had been instrumental in forming it last year, and rejoined the NDA, which he had left in August 2022, dealing a blow to the opposition grouping’s prospects in the crucial state.

Opposition politicians are targeting the ruling coalition and Modi over unemployment and what they call “the bad shape” of the economy. “Everyone wants to get rid of unemployment, inflation and poverty. If the prime minister has achieved anything, then he should give details of what he has done in the past 10 years, and he should share what is his vision for Bihar and the whole country,” Tejashwi Yadav, an INDIA bloc leader from Bihar, told reporters on Monday.

Other states

Other high-stakes states include southern Tamil Nadu, where the BJP could not win even a single one of the 39 seats in 2019; Madhya Pradesh, the Hindi-speaking central state where Modi’s party won 28 out of the 29 constituencies last time; southern Karnataka, where the BJP bagged 25 of the 28 seats; and western Gujarat, the home state of the prime minister, where his party swept the last elections, securing all 26 seats.

source : asia.nikkei