High Turnout may Hint at Polarised Voting
Taking Sides Pundits say high voting result of presidential-style campaigning by Modi
OUR POLITICAL BUREAU NEW DELHI
Ahigh voter turnout across the country in the first big phase of polling for 91 constituencies seems to have set the tone for the 2014 elections. With the BJP unleashing a presidential-style campaign, pundits and politicos term the turnout a signal of polarization for and against BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi.
According to the election commission figures, voters in Delhi, west UP, Haryana, Chandigarh and Kerala have poured out of their homes setting new records and raising the spectre of a divided polity. In Delhi, it was an anti-Congress wave against the establishment that took the polling percentage to an unprecedented high of 66 per cent in 2013 assembly polls.
A similar sort of sentiment seems to prevail with about 64 per cent of Delhi voters having cast their votes and thousands still queuing up at 6pm. Delhi had polled just 52.3 per cent of votes in the last Lok Sabha polls of 2009.
This turn out could cut both ways depending on the performance of the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi. “If the middle classes have voted for AAP, the BJP is in trouble. If the working classes and the minorities who have voted in large numbers have gone with AAP, then Congress is finished,” was how a Congress minister in the Union government explained the turn out.
Western UP, the epicenter of a tragic communal conflagration seven months, beat old records to register 65 per cent votes clearly indicating that communities and castes have voted en bloc. The polling percentage in the west UP districts in 2009 was just 51.3 per cent, which in itself tells the story of people proactively participating in the poll process.
Many of the riot victims of Muzaffarnagar who had shifted out of their villages went back teary-eyed to the cast their votes.
The ten seats of west UP hold a lot of promise to BJP.
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