Vote For Instability!

The Week-hansa Reseach Survey Gives Hung Verdicts in Up, Punjab and Goa. Bjp Gains Uttarakhand.
 

- R. Prasannan

Narendra Modi has gambled with money, literally. He thinks the gamble will pay off and that he will hit the jackpot—the jackpot being the state of Uttar Pradesh.

An opinion poll held by Hansa Research for THE WEEK suggests that seven out of ten voters in Uttar Pradesh think it was a good gamble—to try and flush out black money—but not good enough to reward him with the jackpot. Modi will have to fight a post-poll casino brawl and get it. His party, the survey shows, is likely to get less than half the seats in the UP assembly. He will need a handful more—less than ten—to get the majority.

Giving him a run for his money-gamble is Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, which has tied up an unprecedented alliance with the Congress, its old foe. The alliance is likely to get very close to the BJP’s tally—just a ‘handful’ less.

As in the Gangetic plain, the picture on the Indus plain, too, is promising to be one of instability. THE WEEK-Hansa Research survey shows that the ruling Akali Dal-BJP alliance is likely to be voted out, but the voters are not giving the Amarinder Singh-refreshed Congress a majority. He too will need a handful—picked or plucked from other parties in a post-poll brawl. No different is the picture in BJP-ruled Goa, where our survey suggests that the BJP will need one to three more seats to gain bare majority. Only Uttarakhand, where most political pundits have been giving the Congress a fair chance, is seen in the survey as a sure state for the BJP.

In short, a few handfuls will decide the fate of three of the five states going to the polls next month.