The election results are almost out, and as predicted, the BJP led by Yogi Adityanath is re-elected, breaking a jinx of three and a half decades. The win is spectacular, beating the incumbency factor with a rejuvenated Samajwadi Party of the Yadav clan. Akhilesh has increased his tally well and is poised to win 137 seats, an increase of 85 from his last election. Mayawati, it seems, moves into a temporary political sabbatical, her brother digging her political grave.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra couldn’t become a dream girl, despite her best efforts and being a rising star in Indian politics. She merely batted for a bad team! The Congress party has been shown the door decisively from U.P. and Punjab. Their arrogance in spurning an offer of an anti-BJP alliance from Mamata in Goa has cost Congress much. Perhaps Sonia Ji was apprehensive of Mamata’s rise in the national political scenario that would have never augured well for the Gandhi family’s political future.
Captain Amarinder Singh tolerated the insults from his party high command and must have quit long ago. He had little time to reorganize himself and his new party and had to lose out to the well-oiled election machinery of the Aam Aadmi Party, which has done as expected, very well in Punjab. Uttarakhand threw no surprise, the BJP gaining a clear mandate. Manipur and Goa are expected to go to BJP with a few independents opting for the strongest party and lady luck smiling in quid pro quo for them.
Regarding Uttar Pradesh, I wrote just the other day of the BJP capturing women voters as Didi did in the West Bengal Assembly polls. The women feel safer. The roads are better. The arid and poverty-stricken areas now have much better infrastructure, giving people a better quality of life. In a show of political wisdom and maturity, the people of Uttar Pradesh voted for safety and growth. The ghost of castes had to hide away, despite attempts of polarization, which is a great improvement for our country.
Punjab had become a political circus, resplendent with the usual election eve E.D. raids on political opponents etc. A lesson must be learnt from such abuse of power, which has not helped the BJP in Punjab. BJP scored 2 out of 117 seats, though not unexpected, a disgrace.
I had already written about Didi’s Trinamool and its attempt to grow beyond Bengal. Didi acted knee-jerk, reshaping her national committee and rubbishing demands of one-man-one-post from her youth brigade led by her nephew, Abhishek Bandyopadhyay. She must take a cue from Uttar Pradesh, where the Samajwadi Party, despite their losses, did well enough, which was only due to Akhilesh Yadav. Like the ageing left leaders with little connection to the youths and the masses, the Trinamool party is ageing. It is important to create a young leadership too soon.
If karma is a bitch, elections are truly humbling or humiliating experiences. A candidate from Coimbatore has made headlines for getting a single vote in the rural local body elections held in the district on October 9. Even his family voted for others. Indian voters are intelligent who cannot be taken for granted.
Surrounded by megalomaniacs and military regimes, India is evolving into a great democracy that I must credit the Indian citizens.
Jai Hind
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
