INDIA’S
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POLL PANEL NOD TO APPOINT ARMY CHIEF
ELECTIONS SPECIAL 2014 w w w . l e m a t i n a l . c o m
The Election Commission on Monday gave a go-ahead to the defence ministry to initiate the process of appointing the next army chief, an issue that was caught in a controversy because of the BJP's protest. Lt Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag nominated for next army chief. A recommendation was sent to the appointments committee of cabinet, sources said.
LE MATINAL, PORT-LOUIS, TUESDAY, MAY 13, 2014
Exit poll mayhem, people’s verdict out on May 16 P
olling ended in the final round of the Lok Sabha elections after violence in West Bengal marred balloting even as the BJP and the AAP sparred with the Congress over its Varanasi candidate. At places, voters who have already queued-up were allowed to vote, but officially the polls have ended. Bengal continued to put up strong numbers much like the previous rounds of polling. The turnout at 5pm stood at 77.41%. By 5pm, Bihar had recorded 53.82% voting for six seats. The state has already gone past the 2009 turnout of 44%. The final figures would be declared by the poll panel shortly. Uttar Pradesh witnessed relatively slower polling as it stood at 44.51 at 3pm. The turnout in hot seat Varanasi reached 53.10% at 5pm, comfortably going past the 2009 overall turnout of 42.61%. The temple town's best performance was recorded in 1962 with a turnout of over 63%. Uttar Pradesh will easily eclipse the 2009 voting figure of 46%. Violence was reported from Bengal when at least four villagers received bullet injuries in Haora in Basirhat constituency when several people, allegedly Trinamool Congress supporters, attacked a group of people as they were going to cast their vote.Over 506 million people
A security officer standing guard during the ninth and final phase of the parliamentary elections in Kolkata. more than the combined population of the US, Germany, Canada and the UK have exercised their franchise in 502 constituencies where polling has already been held in eight phases. With the summer elections registering a voter turnout of 66.21% so far, all eyes are on whether the Indian electorate can surpass the record of 64% established in 1984 elections held shortly after Indira Gandhi's assassination. In the ninth phase, 600 candi-
dates are in the fray in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. Nearly 66 million voters are expected to seal their electoral fortunes. Of the 41 seats where polling is underway, the Trinamool Congress (Bengal's ruling party) had won 14 seats in 2009, followed by six each by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (UP's ruling party), five by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and four by the Congress.
The spotlight in this round is on Varanasi, where BJP's prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi will take on Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP's) Arvind Kejriwal and Congress' Ajay Rai. Altogether 42 candidates are in the fray for the Varanasi parliamentary seat which has 1.7 million registered voters. Over 45,000 security personnel have been deployed in the constituency to ensure free and fair polls. -HT
Kejriwal has BJP worried about Modi win margin F
ew doubt the outcome in this spiritual capital of India that goes to polls on Monday. But the BJP is anxious about the victory margin of its poster boy Narendra Modi. A groundswell for Modi, party workers charged up like never before, the idea of having a Prime Minister as the local MP and a resurgence of Hindutva sentiments makes a perfect recipe for BJP's victory in Varanasi. But the last-minute excitement following impressive road shows by AAP's Arvind Kejriwal, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav has prompted the BJP to crosscheck its own figures. The party, however, believes Kejriwal and Congress candidate Ajay Rai will battle it out for the second spot with the SP and Bahujan Samaj Party candidates “out of the race”. Kejriwal is said to have made inroads into the Congress' minority vote bank Muslims account for 3.5 lakh of the total 17 lakh voters in Varanasi. Upper caste supporters of Congress are also believed to be in discomfort with muscleman Mukhtar Ansari backing Rai, a rival
Arvind Kejriwal , leader of AAP. in the region. Between Rai and Kejriwal, BJP leaders say, Muslims would put their money on the man who will have the maximum Hindu votes. Kejriwal, they add, appears to be the frontrunner in terms of appealing to both communities. The saffron party is also aware that its 2009 victory margin of 17,000 - veteran MM Joshi was the candidate then - was too narrow for comfort. It is thus aiming at a 'record-breaking' victory that a “Modi tsunami”, as BJP's general secretary UP
in-charge Amit Shah describes it, deserves. Barring 2004, BJP has retained Varanasi since the Ayodhya days, and 1998 and 1996 were the only two Lok Sabha elections when it won this seat with a margin of more than 100,000 votes. The highest was 151,946 votes in 1998. That year, BJP candidate Shankar Prasad Jaiswal polled 277,232 votes with CPM's Deena Nath Singh Yadav bagging 125,286 votes. Since then, the total votes polled by a BJP candidate has struggled to touch the 200,000 mark.
BJP to get over 250 seats, Congress on way out E
xit polls are predicting the end of the Congress-led UPA’s 10-year rule in India and return of the BJP-led NDA, attesting that its prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi’s game plan focusing the polls on himself has paid off. NewsX has projected a national scenario which sees the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) winning 289 Lok Sabha seats, comfortably past the mark of 272 required for a majority. The NDA had managed 159 seats in 2009.On its own, the NewsX-CVoter survey sees the BJP getting as many as 251 seats. This would be the saffron party’s best ever showing in the Lok Sabha polls. The party had won 182 seats in 1998 and 1999.The
a micro picture. The CNN-IBN gave the BJP 5-7 seats in Delhi, while the AAP was predicted to win 0-2 seats. The Congress, which won all seven Delhi seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, was headed for a wipeout, the CNN-IBN-CSDS survey showed. "Delhi could swing totally in favour of the BJP, projected to get 5-7 seats," CNN-IBN tweeted."Impressive debut by @AamAadmiParty in Punjab… post-poll for Punjab: BJP 6-9, Cong 3-5, AAP 13," the channel added. Opinion polls had earlier showed the BJP and its allies taking the largest share of seats in the election staggered over five weeks. The Congress, in power for the past decade, faces its worst defeat as it
survey sees the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) getting a drubbing, managing just 101 seats, down from the 262 it had achieved five years ago. The Congress' worst performance of 114 seats was in 1999.The BJP-led NDA coalition could get a majority with 272 seats in the Lok Sabha, the India Today-CICERO exit poll said. It said at the end of the staggered Lok Sabha election that the Congress-led UPA would get 115 seats and other parties 156 would win seats. The ABP-Nielsen survey also predicted more than 272 seats for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and 110 for the Congressled United Progressive Alliance. Most channels quickly went on to
Huge wave for BJP
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ismissing reports of any discontent over shifting to Kanpur from Varanasi, BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi on Monday said that there is a "huge wave" for change in support of BJP and Narendra Modi is on "top of this wave". "There is a huge wave for change in this country and it is a wave in support of BJP and Modi is on top of this wave," he told reporters here when asked how he saw the so-called 'Modi wave' in these elections. "Because without BJP there is no Narendra Modi. It is now a combination of BJP and Modi. The ocean and the wave. Without ocean there cannot be a wave. Without a wave the identity of the ocean cannot be projected. So this is a very important combination, an inter-dependent combination. "The stronger the ocean the higher the wave. So for the wave to Murli Joshi. become high, the ocean has to become very strong and very energetic. It is an energetic BJP led by an equally energetic Modi," Joshi said after casting his vote in Ardali Bazaar area here. "When there is a wave in an ocean it goes very high and it changes everything.Modi as BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate is sitting on very top of this wave and he is leading this wave," he said, adding,"It is between BJP led by Modi and the rest. It's not an individual". -TOI
battles the anger of the public over a string of scams and a slow economy. The BJP has insisted a strong '(Narendra) Modi wave' will sweep the nation. The BJP's prime ministerial nominee travelled over 300,000 km and held 5,827 public meetings, mixing traditional methods of holding rallies with innovative use of technology, the party claimed.The exit poll results of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2009 were close to the projection lines. However, predictions of the 2004 general elections were off with the exit-poll favourite NDA securing only 187 seats against the estimates of over 240 to 250 seats. The Congress and its pre-poll allies got 216 seats against projection ranging from 170 to 205 seats.-Ht
Modi travelled over 3 lakh kms during his campaign
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s the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections ended, Narendra Modi seems to have created a record of sorts by travelling over 3,00,000 kms and holding 5827 public meetings, mixing traditional methods of holding rallies with innovative use of technology, the party claimed. Termed by the BJP as "one of the largest" mass outreach in India's electoral history, Modi addressed 437 public meetings in 25 states besides 1350 3-D rallies since September 15, when he held his public rally after being declared as the party's prime ministerial candidate. The total number of his public meetings stood at 5827, which included his 4000 'chai pe charcha', in which he interacted with groups of people across several cities connected to him by video-link, and two mega road shows in Varanasi and Vadodra, the two LS seats he is contesting from. BJP claims Modi has reached out directly to anywhere between 5-10 crore people. The Modi "juggernaut" rolled out on September 15 last year with an ex-servicemen's rally in Rewari in Haryana and ended on May 10 with a rally in Balia in the eastern UP, which goes to polls on Monday. While he addressed 38 rallies held across 21 states to build the momentum before the elections dates were an-
Modi shaking hands with Rajnath Singh. nounced, he launched a massive campaign by kicking off Bharat Vijay rallies with a public meeting in Udhampur on March 26. He addressed a total of 196 such rallies spread across 25 states and covered close to 2,00,000 km. BJP describes the campaign as "historic" and "unprecedented" in its intensity and scale in addition to being innovative and precise. Modi's campaign is one of the biggest mass mobilisation anywhere in the history of electioneering, the party claimed.-TOI