Guessing game begins in Moga; close finish likely
Monday, 25/02/2013
http://www.punjabnewsline.com/news/Guessing-game-begins-in-Moga_-close-finish-likely.html
MOGA: The guessing game has begun in Moga as the candidates’ fate got sealed in the Electronic Voting Machines in Saturday’s byelection. Both the Congress as well as the Shiromani Akali Dal, the two main claimants for the seat, are coming out with their respective claims about winning.
Of about 1.8 lakhs voters, about 1.3 lakh cast their vote on Saturday. There are about 1.1 lakh urban votes and about seventy thousands in the rural areas. According to the rough calculations about 70,000 (64 per cent) people cast their vote in the city while about 56,000 (79 per cent) cast their votes in the rural areas.
While the Congress is banking on the larger urban turnout (in terms of actual votes), the Akalis hope that they may establish substantial lead in the rural areas. In the last election the Akali Dal had established a lead of about 8000 votes in the rural areas which had been negated by the Congress in the urban areas.
Given the polarisation of votes in the rural areas and usually invariable equations, the party may not be able to establish an unassailable lead from the rural areas. Even if the party manages to double the lead it should be around 15,000 only. Besides, this time the Tota Singh and PS Gill factors are going to damage the party prospects.
Even if it manages to establish a lead of 15,000 votes it may not be so easy for the party to make up the losses it is likely to suffer in the urban areas while the Congress may establish as much the same lead. In the last assembly election the Congress had established about 13,000 lead from the urban areas.
To the Congress advantage, the Bahujan Samaj Party had not fielded its candidate this time. Last time the BSP had polled about 1800 votes which are mostly considered otherwise to be the Congress voters. Plus there was a lot of resentment against the Akali candidate Joginderpal Jain this time particularly among the Akalis.
As on now odds appear to be weighed in favour of the Congress for multiple reasons. Even if the Akalis manage to double the lead in rural areas as compared to 2012 and Congress manages to retain the last time lead, the contest remains evenly placed. The anti-Jain sentiment and the anti-incumbency remain the additional factors.
Besides, the BJP leaders in private have been agreeing that their cadres were not prepared to vote for the Akali Dal for the obvious reason that party loses bargaining power in case the Akali Dal wins as it gets absolute majority in the assembly independent of the BJP.
The People’s Party of Punjab which got about 10,000 votes last time, got most of these from the rural areas only. This time again it is likely to damage the ruling Akali Dal prospects. This provides another advantage to the Congress.
At the end it appears to be going to be a very close contest in Moga.
