BJP losing ground in key India state polls

Outcome will be Modi’s final test of popularity before general election

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party is likely to lose two heartland states while a third is too close to call, exit polls showed yesterday in the final test of popularity before a national election due by May next year.

Surveys broadcast at the end of voting for five state assemblies showed the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trailing behind the Congress in some areas.

The actual votes will be counted on Tuesday, and exit polls have been wrong in the past, partly because of the sheer scale of Indian elections involving millions of votes.

Still, nearly all the polls showed that the Congress — led by Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family — will win a clear majority in western Rajasthan state and scrape through in eastern Chhattisgarh, according a survey of surveys pulled together by NDTV.

In Madhya Pradesh, the same polls suggested the BJP and the Congress were locked in a fight down to the wire.

The combined surveys showed the BJP winning 110 seats, the Congress 108, and smaller groups 12 in the 230-member house. To rule, a party requires 116 seats.

The three states are part of the northern Hindi belt, a bastion of the Hindu nationalists. “The BJP is struggling everywhere, for all its bravado,” said Juhi Singh, a spokesman of the Samajwadi Party.

More than 72 per cent of the 47.4 million registered voters had cast their vote by 5pm in Rajasthan where elections were held yesterday for 199 of the 200 assembly seats.

Polling was set to end at 5pm, but officials said those already in the queue at the booths by then were being allowed to vote.

The voting percentage till this time was 72.37, according to the Election Commission website. The exact percentage was expected later.

Polling began at 51,687 booths across the state at 8am. The police reported a few clashes among supporters, but said polling was largely peaceful.

Paramilitary jawans opened fire in the air to disperse miscreants trying to force their way into a booth at a village in Alwar’s Shahjahapur.

In Bikaner’s Kolayat, two groups clashed outside a polling booth and a vehicle was torched. In Sikar too there was a clash. Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, Pradesh Congress Committee chief Sachin Pilot and other leaders were among those who exercised their franchise.

Raje (Jhalrapatan), Pilot (Tonk), former chief minister Ashok Gehlot (Sardarpura) are among the 2,274 candidates in the fray. The election in Ramgarh constituency of Alwar district was put off following the death of Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Laxman Singh.

The results will be out on December 11, along with those from the other four states which saw Assembly elections in the past few weeks.

Raje, who is the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, is fighting against veteran BJP leader Jaswant Singh’s son Manvendra Singh in Jhalrapatan, the constituency she has represented since 2003.

In about 130 constituencies, the contest appears to be mainly between the BJP and the Congress. In the current House, the BJP has 160 seats and the Congress 25.