NEW DELHI: Four states — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka and West Bengal — which together have 190 Lok Sabha seats, are likely to emerge as the key battlegrounds in the elections that will impact the overall outcome.
The NDA had a rich haul of 123 Lok Sabha seats in these states in the 2014 elections. But unlike 2014, the BJP doesn’t have the advantage of a fragmented Opposition in these states this time.In the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh which sends the maximum 80 MPs, political churning appears to have changed the scenario from last time. The BJP, continuing its winning streak of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, decimated its rivals to nearly sweep the state in the 2017 Assembly polls, wresting power from the Samajwadi Party (SP).
But this time, the BJP is seemingly up against double anti-incumbency, against the Centre as well as the state government, and is faced with the daunting challenge of defending a whopping 71 seats. Furthermore, the party will be up against the combined might of the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) even while the Congress, besides the breakaway faction of the SP headed by Shivpal Singh Yadav, are toiling hard to make the contest multi-cornered.
The BJP is sensing a consolidation of minority vote base in Uttar Pradesh with the SP-BSP tie-up, which could negate the gains made out of the division of Muslim votes.
In Bihar, the BJP in alliance with the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) had a runaway success in 2014, bagging 31 out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats. With the Congress-RJD combine and the JD (U) contesting separately, the saffron party benefitted from the multi-cornered contest. This time, with the BJP, JD (U) and the LJP bracing up to battle it out against the RJD-Congress combine, the state is staring at a largely bipolar contest.
The BJP has in recent years poured maximum energy in West Bengal — where it had bagged just two Lok Sabha seats last time —to emerge as a key challenger to the Trinamool Congress, which had won 34 of the 42 constituencies.
Karnataka, which had provided 17 out of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in BJP’s kitty, is also setting up for a bipolar contest, with the Congress-JD (S) challenging the saffron outfit. While the BJP is principally banking on former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa to swing the formidable Lingayat vote base, the party is likely to miss out on the services of former Union minister Ananth Kumar, who passed away recently.
