The best-case scenario is that the BJP will top out at around 50 seats in UP -- a drop of 12 from the 62 it had won in 2019. Taken in tandem with Maharashtra and Karnataka, this is what is likely to put paid to the BJP's ambitions of a third term for Modi, argues Prem Panicker.
'Modi will do himself a favour if he starts studying about Mahatma Gandhi.' 'I feel pity that we have a PM who has no idea of our own history.'
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com tried to buy a house on his recent visit to Srinagar.
'This is total fraud. You are showing me the slip of my vote but not counting it so this is fraud.'
In Phase 6, indications are that the BJP, which is defending 40 seats, will lose in double digits and gain in single digits. Not good, if you are the ruling party scrambling to earn a working majority, with just one phase left to go, argues Prem Panicker.
While people voted in a fifth round that will set the tone as this election rounds into the straight, and while Modi on the stump chews the cud of personal grievances and hackneyed promises that have long since passed their use-by date, there is a rogue wave rising -- what damage it will do, we will know 16 days from today, observes Prem Panicker.
'If you post on social media on an issue like power cuts in Tral, the police will come to your home and tell you to remove your social media post.' 'If you don't, then the local police threaten you that they will book you under PSA.' 'This is happening all the time in Kashmir.'
'Are we so ready to believe that in this country whose virtues we constantly shout from the rooftops, there is no single person -- other than Modi -- in a minimum of 272 elected MPs with the talent and ability to lead this country?' asks Prem Panicker.
'No Indian politician has been killed in India for upholding the Constitution except for Kashmiri mainstream politicians.' 'Yet they call us terrorist or militant.'
'There is a huge wait in Kashmir for compassion from the prime minister of India.'
'Whether she is in power or not, she always makes it a point to visit us. This is her best quality as a leader.'
'An entire operation was running systematically prior to the revoking of Article 370.'
'These statements which you are telling me were never uttered from mosques on that day.' 'And if this had happened, I would have got the report as the chief secretary of J&K.'
'Sheikh Abdullah ruled the state with secular values. Post 1953, when he was sacked, corruption took over governance.'
2019 was the Bharatiya Janata Party's breakout year, when it stretched the boundaries of what was thought possible and ended up with 303 seats on its own steam. Now it is forced to play defence, on a pitch queered by too many variables, asserts Prem Panicker.
Shaheed Maqbool Sherwani changed the course of Indian history forever, but himself lies forgotten in the town he saved.
'I have faced 18 hours of darkness daily all my life.'
'The Congress backstabbed us and the BJP frontstabbed us.' 'This is the only difference between the two parties.'
On balance, RG contesting from Raebareli instead of Amethi isn't the masterstroke the party's adherents are touting it to be, but neither is it the blunder the BJP and its tame media is framing it as, points out Prem Panicker.
It's a different Srinagar from what Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf encountered 24 years ago. Tourists throng the Kashmir Valley post-Article 370, azaadi appears dead, and everyone says one man is responsible for this change, so what if his poster is nowhere to be seen.
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