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Countdown begins for an election sans wave or burning issues

— Photo: PTI

BJP’s Madhya Pradesh in-charge general secretary Ananth Kumar, senior party leader Sushma Swaraj and party candidate Jitendra Daga at an election campaign in Bhopal on Thursday.

BHOPAL: Countdown has begun for the November 27 elections in 230 Assembly constituencies in Madhya Pradesh. It is an election bereft of either a wave or burning issues.

While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Opposition Congress have promised a number of sops to the poor and weaker sections, the Samajwadi Party has gone a step further, with assurances of free food to the poor, doubling of social security pension and safety to the minorities.

Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party has promised to work for the welfare of all sections through its mantra of social engineering and assured job reservation to the economically weaker sections among upper castes.

Both the BJP and the Congress have traded charges over claims in their manifestos. Local newspapers have become their favourite ground to hit out at each other through advertisements.

If the BJP is flaunting the development card and banking on Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, the Congress has harped on corruption.

The BSP and Uma Bharti’s Bharatiya Jan Shakti Party are relying more on door-to-door contacts, apart from vote catching power of their chiefs.

On Friday, Mr. Chauhan took the Congress head-on over its claim that it would win the election “at all costs and under any circumstances” and asked it to clarify what it meant by it.

Addressing a press conference here, he asked the Congress to come clean as its assertion was giving rise to suspicion that the party was planning to create disturbances on the polling day. “There is only one way of winning elections and that is through the support and vote of the electorate. In a democracy this is the only way. The Congress is turning politics into a crude joke,” he said.

The Chief Minister sought to know from the Congress if it had prepared two manifestos, one officially released and the other which Union Commerce Minister Kamal Nath kept flaunting to the people. “A leader of Kamal Nath’s stature is promising free ration, clothing and housing to the people. I ask the Congress to tell the people, which one is the real, and whom should the people believe.” On the other hand, Ms. Bharti, who was the star campaigner for the BJP in the 2003 polls, has dwelt on the “deception and double standard of the BJP” which ditched her.

The BJP leadership also appears caught on the horns of a dilemma on the issue of Sadhvi Pragnya Singh Thakur, an accused in the Malegaon bomb blast case. It has been raised by Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L. K. Advani and party president Rajnath Singh but it has failed to become a talking point in the political circles or among sections of the general public.

A cross-section of the people, to whom The Hindu spoke here on Friday, described the “meek and veiled efforts” of the BJP to raise the issue as a “double game.” They pointed out that the party had in the past sought to play with people’s emotions on the issues of Ramar Sethu, Amarnath shrine and Ram temple to derive “political mileage.”

A college student at Malviya Nagar retorted: “Why has the BJP not been able to construct Ram Temple in Ayodhya till now? Obviously, the party raises issues like Hindutva only during the election time. Why has it not taken to the streets on the issue of Sadhvi Pragnya? It is only doing a lip-service.”

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