Amid sex abuse row & Rajput ire, BJP eyes '2019' repeat as stage set for Lok Sabha battle round 3

New Delhi: As 93 seats in 12 states hit the polling booths on Tuesday for the third phase of Lok Sabha election, BJP is hoping to repeat its 2019 performance but it is wary of a sex abuse allegations involving its Karnataka ally’s candidate and the Rajput community's anger with it in Gujarat.

Congress and its Opposition allies are hoping to chip into saffron bastions  riding on a campaign on social justice, unemployment and price rise besides consolidating the Dalits, Tribals and OBCs by accusing the BJP of planning to change the Constitution that could hit the existing quota regime.

In 2019, BJP had won 72 of these seats while Congress had won just five. Eight seats each went to BJP allies and Congress allies.

Of the 72 won by BJP, 42 seats they won three times consecutively since 2009. Majority of the BJP’s 42 hattrick constituencies were from Gujarat (15), Karnataka (10) and Madhya Pradesh (7). In this phase, UP has only two such seats where the party won since 2009.

Congress has only one such seat – Malda South where it had a hattrick.

Its only solace is that it had lost most of these 42 seats in 2009. However this time, the party is confident of reducing BJP numbers especially in Karnataka where it is the ruling party.

All the 26 seats will go to polls in Gujarat while the last 14 of the 28 seats will witness polls in Karnataka. Already, the BJP has won the Surat seat uncontested in controversial circumstances as the Congress candidate’s nomination was rejected and other candidates withdrew from the race.

Gujarat will also see whether the Congress-AAP alliance can work even as the BJP has won all the 26 seats in the last two polls. While Congress is fighting 24 seats this time and hoping to give a good fight in a couple of seats like Banaskhata and Anand, AAP is contesting two.

While Rajput ire is a matter of concern for the BJP after one of its candidates’ remarks against the community, the party is trying to minimise the fallout of the sexual abuse allegations involving JD(S)’ Prajwal Revanna, a sitting MP who is seeking re-election.

Politically crucial Bihar (5 seats) and Maharashtra (11) where the I.N.D.I.A. alliance is giving a tough fight to the NDA also go to polls as well as ten in Uttar Pradesh, seven in Madhya Pradesh and four each in West Bengal and Assam among others.

The prominent fights are in Baramati (Supriya Sule vs Sunetra Pawar), Gandhinagar (Amit Shah), Raghoghar (Digvijaya Singh) Mainpuri (Dimple Yadav), Guna (Jyotiraditya Scindia) and Vidisha (Shivraj Chouhan).

Among this, the fight in Baramati will attract national attention as it will be a battle of wits between Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar, who had taken control of NCP by splitting it. Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule is fighting again in the seat while Ajit has fielded his wife Sunetra from the family bastion. 

BJP is also keenly fighting the Mainpuri seat where SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav is seeking to ensure that her late father-in-law’s stronghold remains with the party.

Initially, the Election Commission had announced that 94 seats would go to polls in the third phase. However, the election in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul was rescheduled to May 7 following the death of the BSP candidate while it also postponed the polling in Anantnag-Rajouri seat in Jammu and Kashmir from May 7 to May 25 following representations from a section of parties.

In this phase too, one of the concerns for the EC would be the voter turnout, which has not improved compared to 2019 statistics. The 2019 phase 3 polls had recorded 68.40 per cent turnout.