BJP hopeful of ‘one-nation, one-election’ ballast to its election prospects
New Delhi: For the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s big move to push through his ‘one-nation-one-election’ concept promises to be the big ticket idea which can disrupt conventional calculations and allow it to frame the upcoming Lok Sabha polls along helpful lines as the party believes the issue has the potential to catch popular imagination.
The government’s decision on Friday to form a committee under former president Ram Nath Kovind to explore the feasibility of simultaneous elections promises to turn the matter, which has long animated the Prime Minister, into a weighty political plank in the run-up to five state assembly polls followed by the
all-important Lok Sabha elections.
Coming as it does a day after the government announced a “special session” of Parliament between September 18-22, the development has fuelled buzz about the possibility of early Lok Sabha
polls, even though no official agenda for the legislature’s meeting has been put out so far. Despite uncertainty about how the issue will pan out and if the government will take it up during the session, most BJP leaders sounded confident about its implications for the party.With party’s performance in state polls often inferior to its show in Lok Sabha elections, its leaders are of the view that simultaneous Lok Sabha and state assembly polls will result in overarching national issues and ‘Modi factor’ to play a bigger role, stripping regional agenda and leadership of some of their sway. Generally, it is the regional parties, and not the main opposition Congress, which have proved more resilient and successful in fighting the BJP. Political experts believe that they may be at a disadvantage if the assembly polls are held together with the Lok Sabha elections as national issues are bound to make a deeper impact.
Though Odisha voters made a point in 2019 when their support for BJP in assembly polls was six per cent less than in Lok Sabha election despite both being held.
