Indian polls: Opponents hurl new weapons at front-runner Modi

The front-runner in the 2014 national elections in India - Narendra Modi of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - finds a personal issue emerging as a highly embarrassing one for him even as the balloting has already begun and things appear to favour him otherwise. The 63-year-old chief minister of the western Gujarat state has been accused of hiding information by the Congress and other opponents as Modi has, of late, admitted he is "married" - an issue that was earlier either evaded or not accepted by him.
Modi, whose BJP party is seeking to upstage the Congress from power through the current voting, has mentioned, in the affidavit submitted for contesting from his home state of Gujarat, that he is "married" while he kept the space blank in the earlier elections that he contested for the state assembly. The Congress has fully seized the opportunity and law minister Kapil Shibal said they have petitioned to the election commission for taking actions against Modi.
However, the BJP sought to play down the matter, saying it is a personal issue that must not be dragged in the polls and warned that it might boomerang on the Congress and other critics. But unruffled over the BJP stance, the Congress and other BJP-baiters say it is a gross offence since correct information was not given in the earlier affidavits. It may be mentioned that Modi is also contesting from Hindu holy town of Varanasi in the Uttar Pradesh. He married at an early age, but hardly lived with his "estranged" wife.
Incidentally, the BJP is facing another embarrassing situation because the parties opposing Modi are trying to bring Atal Bihari Vajpyee, the charismatic BJP leader and former prime minister, in a sensitive subject to show that even he was not favourably disposed towards Modi. They say that Vajpayee, as the prime minister, was unhappy over the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002 when Narendra Modi was the chief minister and had chided him for wrongly handling the violence. Congress and others have raised the question: How can the person, who was not appreciated by his own leader, govern the entire nation as he failed in the Gujarat state? It was not known whether Vajpayee had really said so.
As the political parties are busy in campaigning for the staggered polls that will be over on May 14 and the results would be known on May 16, none is lagging behind in criticizing the opponents. Modi says that his detractors are too unkind to attack him, sensing their defeat in the polls. Addressing a meeting in Siliguri in Paschim Banga, he even criticized chief minister Mamata Bannerjee, saying she was only thinking about the "vote-bank", turning a blind eye to ideals of politics. Interestingly, addressing a rally in Kolkata more than a month ago, Modi had good words for Mamata as he urged the people to elect "Didi" in the state and the BJP at the centre.
It seems that his ties with Mamata have turned much sour because the Paschim Bangla chief minister is mincing no words against the Gujarat chief minister on communal and other issues. Modi is known to have either encouraged, or remained silent on, the 2002 riots when more than 2,000 people, mostly minority Muslims, were killed. Modi, however, denies any wrong doing.
In the current elections, surveys and gallop polls have clearly favoured the BJP and Modi, although they are unsure if the party and its allies would be nearer to the "magic number", 272,which gives the absolute majority to a single party or alliance in the 543-member "Lokshaba", lower house of the parliament. Most assessments put the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the BJP, to win between 200 and 225 seats. This means they would, in that event, fall behind by a good number of seats required to form the government. The ruling Congress brushes aside such forecasts, saying such readings were proved wrong in 2004 polls when the Congress triumphed. Most surveys say that the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), led by the Congress, would cut a sorry figure this time and their tally may come down to a frustrating below 100 - a number that the UPA describes as "propaganda" by the interested quarters.
Meanwhile, some smaller and regional parties are likely to play crucial roles in the formation of the new government in the absence of any likely clear winner in the voting that began on April 7.It is possible that in the post-result scenario, these parties would like to exact the bigger slice of the cake in exchange of support to, and cooperation with, the bigger parties.
It is also possible that leaders of such parties may even stake the prime ministership, despite the fact that their parties may not get too many seats. As India has been experiencing "coalition culture" for last many years, smaller or regional organisations find opportunities to rule the roost after the electoral outcome. One such example is that of Mr. H.D. Deve Gowda of Janata Dal (S) who had become the prime minister in the United Front government with only 41 seats in the 543-member Lokshaba.
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