It will culminate virtually after two months on May 23, the result day. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is aiming for a Congress-Mukt (Congress free) “Bharat” and establish its saffron rule from Panchayat to the Parliament, all under the leadership of one man – Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The stakes are very high and all will depend on how the voters perceive the five-year government of Modi as against the previous ten-year government by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh backed by Sonia Gandhi.
During 2014 election the National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP had a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha but not in the Upper House Rajya Sabha. By 2019 BJP is also likely to attain a majority in the Rajya Sabha. Now the bigger question is whether Modi and NDA can get a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha. Modi also does realise that he may not be as competent to run a coalition government as Atal Bihari Vajpayee who ran a 24-party coalition at the Centre with not much of clamour. Modi is also perceived as a loner with very few trusted friends who are not quite the primus inter pares (first among equals) in the party and the government. Perhaps this element is likely to play a major detrimental role in case there is a coalition government.
With the divided opposition and their ego running high with a hope that everyone has a chance to sit in the South Block Prime Minister’s office, it seems highly unlikely that the chariot of the BJP-led NDA would be stopped in 2019 general elections. However, this election is a golden opportunity for the opposition to flock together and fight against Modi in the battle field. Since all efforts to bring in the like-minded anti-Modi parties together under one umbrella has miserably failed and alliances are being made on state-to-state basis, Modi is likely to wade through this election quite comfortably. For the opposition it is still about three weeks time to shed their ego as well as aspirations and join hands.
While the opposition looks to be in a bit of disarray and is getting into alliances state-wise being called as “mahagathbandhan” (grand alliance), the NDA is all set with declaration of candidates’ names for the forthcoming elections. In fact the NDA has already launched its campaign “Vijay Sankalp” formally on Sunday at Agra, led by BJP president Amit Shah. The prime focus for the BJP as of now looks as if Uttar Pradesh will see a lot many footfalls by senior BJP leaders as there are 80 seats to Lok Sabha, the highest in the country.
Virtually all the opposition leaders who all have aspiration to become the Prime Minister of India, be it Congress President Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, etc, are to be blamed for the failure of the “mahagathbandhan” at the Central level which could have posed a credible challenge to the BJP-led NDA. But it is the Congress president who is perhaps most at fault since it was up to him, as the leader of a 134-year-old party, to set the trend for advances and retreats in the matter of forming the proposed mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) which never took shape and virtually offering victory to NDA on a platter unless the NDA axes its own foot.
