Following a relatively quiet first round of polls, the opposition Congress fired salvos of wealth distribution, inheritance tax, and including Muslims in the OBC category for reservation in Karnataka to protect its minority vote bank, which is critical to defending its 15 seats in Communist-ruled Kerala and increasing its numbers from one seat in Karnataka. While all of Kerala goes to the polls on April 26, half of Karnataka’s seats are up for grabs on Friday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi fired the first round, citing the INDI alliance agenda on wealth sharing and accusing the Opposition of attempting to shift money from the majority Hindu to its Muslim vote bank. Following this, the BJP cited then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s December 9, 2006 speech at the National Development Council meeting in Vigyan Bhawan, in which he stated that innovative plans must be implemented to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development.
Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister, was in the audience. If that wasn’t enough, a major Congress NRI advisor discussed instituting an inheritance tax in India similar to the US, while the Congress state government included Muslims in the OBC reservation category to woo the significant minority vote bank in the poll-bound state. The Congress appears to have sent a message that wealth creation is bad and that those who earn it will face high taxes if the party is elected.
The concept of wealth redistribution is Nehruvian, and it found electoral resonance alongside nationalization when India’s economy was worth $30 billion.
While the world has moved on from Hugo Chavez’s failed communism and socialism, the Grand Old Party remains locked in the past. India’s economy is now approaching $4 trillion, making it the world’s fastest-growing big economy. The millennials and neo-middle class want India to become the world’s third largest economy rather than reverting to disastrous socialism in recent decades.
With Congress leader Rahul Gandhi harping on the caste census, the Opposition’s strategy is apparent. It seeks to solidify the Muslim vote in its favor by promoting a Marxist interpretation of wealth distribution in the name of social justice, while also dividing the Hindu vote against the BJP-led NDA by exploiting the caste issue.
Simply put, it is a policy that will not win Congress the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but will safeguard its 2019 seat count from further electoral attrition. The young aspirational India supports the country becoming the world’s third largest economic power and is categorically opposed to the redistribution of wealth from productive to non-productive populations under the guise of minority empowerment and social fairness.
While the opposition seeks to drag PM Modi into a mess of caste and religion politics, the electorate is still looking for the INDI alliance’s missing PM candidate, with alliance members fighting furiously in states such as Kerala and West Bengal.
In stark contrast, the BJP has a strong leader in Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has defined national and political goals. Rather than waiting for the INDI alliance to engage in horse trading and political compromises to produce a leader after June 4 in the unlikely event that the Opposition gains power, the NDA has an efficient clean administrator in Narendra Modi, who possesses credibility, experience, and a phenomenal track record in governance, national security, and global diplomacy. The BJP-led NDA has a great vision of making India a developed country by 2047 with a functioning Prime Minister 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whereas the Opposition Congress’s vision is limited to regressive far-left ideals in the name of social empowerment and justice. Even their political attacks on Prime Minister Modi are either personal or based on outdated clichés. The main goal is to bring the BJP leader down to caste and religion, diverting public attention away from Prime Minister Modi’s development plan.
Although money power, infighting, and poor ticket distribution are common among all political parties during elections, public attraction to a national leader and his or her ideas for economic empowerment and progress will distinguish the winner from the loser. The 2024 election results will be determined by who the public wants to lead India in order to fulfill its objectives.
Despite having a great track record over the last decade, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken the political fight to the Opposition by dismantling the wealth distribution system. He has thrown a political curve ball at the opposition by claiming that the majority Hindu community will be looted as part of the wealth distribution and minority empowerment strategy in order to feed Muslims and illegal immigrants.
By using the word’mangalsutra’ in his political vocabulary, the Prime Minister has directly addressed the masses, particularly women voters, while also countering the Opposition’s narrative on Shakti in Hinduism. To top it off, he and Home Minister Amit Shah have stated unequivocally that the 4% job reservation for Muslims will be kept aside and dispersed among OBCs, Dalits, and SC-ST communities.
In terms of Karnataka elections, the BJP is poised to attain numbers comparable to 2019, despite money power, political maneuvers, and minority vote bank consolidation by the state’s ruling party. With 14 South Karnataka seats scheduled to go to polls on April 26, the NDA’s ally, the JD (S), led by nonagenarian former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, is working hard to assist the NDA win the erstwhile Mysuru area. The fact is that even the BJP leadership admires Vokkaliga leader Deve Gowda, who has made an effort to advocate for the coalition despite his late age.
He is capitalizing on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s enormous popularity in Karnataka, despite the fact that the NDA’s prospects in the Chitradurga and Chikballapur constituencies are uncertain. PM Modi’s popularity, his development plan, strong alliance votes in crucial pockets, anti-incumbency sentiment against the state administration, and recent violence have all contributed to the Hindu narrative in the Karnataka election.
The alliance of B S Yedyurappa’s Lingayat clan and H D Deve Gowda’s Vokkaliga clan, as well as widespread public support for PM Modi, should ensure that the BJP maintains its 2019 seat count with only a few exceptions.
In Kerala, it seems clear that the BJP will increase its vote share, but the main question is if PM Modi’s popularity translate into seats. The BJP is contesting elections in five constituencies: Thiruvananthapuram, Attingal, Pathanamthitta, Thrissur, and Palakkad.
However, Rajeev Chandrasekhar in Thiruvananthapuram, V Muraleedharan in Attingal, and Suresh Gopi in Thrissur represent the party’s best chances. The BJP’s Anil Antony from Pathanamthitta and C Krishna Kumar from Palakkad are battling hard with a 50-50 chance, but a state with a 26% Muslim population and 18% Christian population would be a difficult nut to crack, especially for a leader with national popularity like Narendra Modi.
Modi
While the BJP’s numbers will remain largely unchanged in the second phase, with BJP-ruled states such as MP, Maharashtra, Manipur, Rajasthan, Tripura, and UP going to polls, as well as three seats in BJP-rising West Bengal, PM Modi and his party, as in the past, have devised a strategy to maintain the electoral tempo in the General elections until the last day. Despite a good development and economic track record, PM Modi and the BJP are not hesitant to play the street card to guarantee that no criticism from the opposition goes unanswered.
The Islamist-engineered Rameswaram café bombing and the brutal killing of a college-bound daughter of a Congress corporator, combined with rising radicalization fueled by Gulf money flowing from north Kerala into South Karnataka, have made internal security a critical issue in the Southern State, which remains the preferred destination for global companies.
Because the state is part of the Chennai-Bengaluru defense corridor, the voters and multinational firms will require assurances of internal security from both the Centre and the State. With PM Modi making the NDA’s zero tolerance to terror policy very clear, as well as a concurrent commitment to fight terrorists wherever they are found, the BJP is on a good track in the second round, with phase III of polls looking even better, with core Hindu states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, MP, and UP going to the polls.
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