Tough battle for Modi in key state polls

First woman leader takes charge in Kashmir

KOLKATA, April 4, (AFP): Millions of voters head to the polls Monday in two Indian states, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party facing a tough fight as it tries to tighten its grip on power nationally.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) must win state elections to gain more seats in the nation’s upper house of parliament, which has been blocking reforms seen as crucial to fuelling economic growth.

Most members of the upper house, which has obstructed measures such as a planned standardised goods and services tax, are indirectly elected by state legislatures.

The Hindu nationalist BJP is seen as having little chance in the large rural state of West Bengal in eastern India against a feisty chief minister popular with millions of impoverished voters.

It has a stronger chance of seizing power for the first time in the tea-growing state of Assam in the northeast, where it has promised to crack down on illegal immigration from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Swept

Modi’s party swept to power in a general election two years ago promising business-friendly reforms to overhaul the economy, but lost out in two critical state polls in 2015.

Analyst Neelanjan Sircar said the ruling party desperately needed a win in state polls this year.

“The BJP is clearly not doing well in the state elections and if they do not win one in 2016, they would have gone without having won a single state election for nearly two years, which is not good for any party,” said Sircar, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.

“The only state in which the BJP may do well is Assam, and it is important for them to win this so that their base feels energised and the morale of the party workers is boosted.”

Polls opened at 7 am (0130 GMT) on Monday, with some 3.8 million voters eligible to cast their ballots in West Bengal and another 9.4 million in Assam.

Elections in both states are being held in phases, with around 85 million people eligible to vote in total.

Security was tight in West Bengal, with several of the contested seats located in impoverished regions where Maoist rebels have long been battling government rule.

Armed police have been deployed, along with helicopters, to try to ensure polling runs smoothly, election commission officials have said.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, a 61-year-old former national railways minister known affectionately as “didi”, or elder sister, is expected to remain in power.

But a row over the collapse last week of a flyover under construction in the state capital Kolkata, which claimed 26 lives, could cost her Trinamool Congress party some votes.

Banerjee’s political rivals have accused the government of failing to tackle problems with the project that began in 2009 and was only supposed to take 18 months.

Biswanath Chakraborty, a Kolkatabased political scientist, said the disaster had “tainted the party for the first time since it came to power five years ago”.

In Assam, known for its tea plantations and a myriad of rebel insurgencies, the BJP has teamed up with local parties that support indigenous rights and has pledged a crackdown on illegal immigration from Bangladesh.

Migrants have long been accused of illegally entering the state from Bangladesh and grabbing land, causing tensions with local people and sporadic outbreaks of communal violence.

Popularity

Analysts say the popularity of the traditionally dominant Congress party is waning in Assam, offering the BJP its one chance of state election success.

The southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry will hold elections later this month and next, but the BJP is not expected to win in any of these. Counting and the release of results for all five states will take place on May 19.

Mehbooba Mufti was sworn in on Monday as Indian-administered Kashmir’s first woman leader, taking over from her father nearly three months after he died in office.

India’s only Muslim-majority state had been ruled directly from New Delhi since the death in January of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who formed an uneasy alliance with the nationally ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after a 2015 election.

His daughter, who heads the moder- ate People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that he founded in 1999, had initially appeared reluctant to continue the unpopular coalition with the Hindu nationalist BJP.

The PDP’s main support base is among Muslims in the Kashmir Valley, the epicentre of a separatist insurgency that broke out in 1989, although the party stops short of calling for independence for the Himalayan region.

“Her key task will be to recoup the PDP’s credibility among her constituents (Kashmiri Muslims), which is at an all time low, and manage support from Delhi vis-a-vis economic assistance,” political historian Siddiq Wahid told AFP.

Mehbooba Mufti reached an agreement at a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, although the terms of their deal have not been disclosed.

Her swearing-in takes the number of female chief ministers in India to five, although she is the first woman to serve in the post in the deeply conservative state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Modi did not attend the swearing in ceremony in the state’s winter capital, Jammu, but tweeted his congratulations. Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, both of which claim the Himalayan territory in its entirety.

Several rebel groups have for decades been fighting troops and police deployed on the Indian side of the divided region, seeking independence or a merger of the territory with Pakistan.

The fighting has left tens of thousands dead, mostly civilians.