Saffron surge sees Congress, BJP headed for photo-finish

The Congress and the BJP are locked in a fierce fight for emerging as the single largest party at the end of three rounds of polling.

With results for 372 seats, or two-thirds of the Lok Sabha now decided and locked inside electronic voting machines, attention is gradually shifting to the process of government formation.

The party that individually (without allies) has the most number of seats will get the first shot at cobbling together the next government. Consequently, every seat is critical and the election campaign is expected to reach a crescendo in the next two phases as both national parties put in a final burst to streak ahead.

“The race is getting closer,’’ said psephologist Yogendra Yadav of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. Yashwant Deshmukh of C-Voter predicted a photofinish between the Congress and the BJP in seat tally.

The narrowing of the gap between the Congress and the BJP has come as a surprise, given that the latter began as the underdog when the election process was kicked off in March. There are two reasons for the BJP’s surge. One, the party seems to have retained ground in its core areas like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.  
Two, it is expected to register gains in Jharkhand, Bihar and Assam. However, the surge is likely to halt in the next two phases when its loss areas, Rajasthan and Punjab, will poll. 

What has queered the pitch for the Congress is likely losses in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. These were the main catchment areas for the party in the 2004 polls and while the extent of its losses this time are unclear, even Congress leaders acknowledge that their tally can only go down. ``There is tremendous suspense about Andhra because no one really knows how the state has polled. We know that the Congress fared badly in the first phase and recovered in the second. But we don’t know to what extent it recovered,’’ said Yadav.

Tamil Nadu will poll in the final phase on May 13. According to Yadav, the AIADMK’s campaign is gaining momentum and Jayalalithaa will do well at the cost of the Congress and DMK. But, he added, it is too early to judge whether Jayalalithaa can match the Congress-DMK sweep of 2004 when the alliance mopped up all 40 seats, including one seat in Puducherry.

“The contest everywhere is so close that it has reached a point where a  seat forecast requires a level of precision that none of us have,’’ said Yadav. Deshmukh was braver. He said there is a possibility that the two national parties together could be below the majority mark of 272. If this happens, the regional parties together will be more than the Congress and BJP combined, making government formation a task that neither may relish.