DC Edit | Electoral Battle Lines Set in 4 States, 1 UT

The battle lines are drawn as four states, and the Union Territory of Puducherry, go to polls between April 9 and April 29. This year’s polls in India’s eternal rounds of elections every year have been most eagerly anticipated even as they represent a bigger challenge for the ruling BJP-NDA at the Centre as the Opposition INDIA bloc parties are in power in three of four state,s while the BJP rules in Assam and is in alliance with the NRC in Puducherry where it is a junior partner.

As the saying goes, these are polls for the INDIA bloc to lose; they hold the upper hand in West Bengal, a state not known to vote for a change of regime in a hurry and where the Marxists and then Mamata Banerjee have ruled for lengthy periods, and in Tamil Nadu and Kerala where two combinations of parties in the ruling LDF and the Congress-led UDF, which are in alliance nationally, are set to face off against each other.

The much-anticipated round of polls has an additional significance to it as the elections are being held after a controversial revision of polls with the reverential acronym of SIR. While it is believed that the revision would have stripped the poll rolls of dead and not normally resident voters, ruling parties in the states have criticised the exercise for not being inclusive and placing impediments in front of many genuine voters too.

Given India’s numbers and the ambiguity over whether a voter is expected to exercise his franchise in his home state or only in the one he is resident in, there can never be 100 per cent perfect poll rolls. While a supplementary list will be published in West Bengal to be added to the final rolls, the total electorate numbers have been fixed for the other three states and the UT.

The Election Commission may have lent an ear to grievances over spreading the West Bengal polls over eight rounds (in 2021) as it is now proposing to hold them in just two rounds (April 23 and 29) even if there is no change discernible yet in the old pattern of politics-related violence in the state. The logistics cannot be any less challenging now, either, but it does appear the ECI has convinced itself that it can be handled.

The die is cast in the sense that the contentious poll rolls in West Bengal will be available before the first election day of April 23 and there is no question of switching back to any old poll rolls. This should put an end to the long controversy over the hurried way the revision exercise was carried out though the adjudication process will still offer those denied their vote a chance to seek a remedy in West Bengal.

The contests in at least three states will virtually be straight ones between two fronts. Tamil Nadu may be the exception as a three-to-four-cornered contest is on the cards with the actor-turned-politician Vijay likely to contest on his own, much like Seeman's NTK, which will be fielding candidates in all 234 constituencies. The alliances in Puducherry are not final yet with the only certainty that the DMK and Congress will be staying together, though there is some dispute over which party will lead the alliance there.