Uttarakhand Assembly polls: Tough going and challenges galore for Congress

Uttarakhand may be a small hilly state, but nonetheless for both Congress and the BJP, it is a battle of prestige. While the BJP is going about town citing inefficiency, corruption and infighting in the state and asking people to vote for it, the Congress is staring at a humongous challenge to retain power in 2017 in the state.

In 2012 both the parties had ended up almost even in terms of vote share and seats with the BJP winning 31 seats and the Congress bagging 32. But five years down the line, incumbent Chief Minister Harish Rawat has his task cut out. Last year when the BJP had been accused of cashing in on the internal bickering in the grand old party to overthrow Rawat's government and was subsequently reprimanded by the Supreme Court, the Congress had hoped that the sympathy wave would help them in the state elections.

But if one were to go by some of the opinion polls done recently, going into the elections the BJP seems to have an upper hand. It is being said that Rawat's rating is said to be down and the factional fight in the Congress has not helped matters. On the other hand, there are some reports which say that like 2012 it will again be a close contest between Congress and BJP.

The Congress has much to answer in these elections – The tackling of the June 2013 natural disasters after cloudburst which triggered massive floods and landslides that claimed more than 5,000 lives in the Kedarnath valley is one of them. Post the disaster, the then CM Vijay Bahuguna was replaced with Rawat in early 2014. Then there is the issue of political coup engineered by rebel Congress legislators led by Bahuguna and a sting video of Rawat purportedly offering money to lure legislators to save his government, which have dented the image of the party. Plus, charges such as Rawat's principal secretary Md Shahid seen last year in a sting video allegedly inking a deal to award liquor distribution to a private player have only made matters worse.

Uttarakhand has two major physical divisions - Garhwal and Kumaon which have an impact on voting patterns. Caste equations too are important the state having sizeable community of Rajputs, Brahmins voters.  For the Congress, the challenge is to counter BJP's strategy of fielding more Brahmin candidates from Garhwal and more Rajput candidates from Kumaon region. As for the Congress, Rajput candidates have dominated the list with reports saying that Rawat had a major say in ticket distribution, giving heartburns to many other in the party who were denied ticket.

Moreover, the Congress will be hoping that BJP's strategy of giving a sizeable number of seats to so-called outsiders will backfire on them. Uttarakhand Revenue and Irrigation Minister Yashpal Arya and former Yamunotri MLA Kedar Singh Rawat are some of the Congress defectors who were given tickets by the saffron party. Also, many former Congress MLAs who had revolted against the Rawat government in March 2016 have been rewarded with tickets by BJP and old-timers have been ignored. This has led to protests by BJP leaders and the Congress would hope that it would work to their advantage.

Nonetheless, Rawat has to counter the personal popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which is still high among voters. The saffron party is also projecting the PM as a messiah of the poor out to fight corruption. If the BJP is able to wrest power from the Congress, the saffron party is sure to call it a thumbs up for the demonetisation move.

Rawat is countering Opposition's charges by saying - “BJP ke saare balwan milkar kamjor mukhyamantri ko chiit karna chahtey hain (BJP's powerful leaders want to crush a weak CM).” Will the electorate buy his arguments or will he have to vacate the chair that he had to wait for 12 years to occupy? The answer – Coming soon...