Assembly Elections - 2021

On 6th April 2021, Votes were polled in 1,53,538 Polling Stations spread across 475 Assembly Constituencies, in the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and for third phase of Assam and West Bengal. The number of Polling Stations has increased in view of the fact that the number of voters per polling station has been reduced from 1,500 to 1,000 keeping social distancing norms in view.

The voter turnout In Assam was 82.28% and 84.21% in West Bengal. While 73.40% of the people voted in Kerala till 6 pm, neighboring Tamil Nadu witnessed 62.86% during the period till 5 pm. 77.87% voters cast their votes in Puducherry. All these amidst the growing Pandamic.  In Bengal it was in 8 phases ending on 29th of April, in Assam in three phases, beginning on March 26.

Pinarayi Vijayan, Mamata Banerjee, Edappadi Palaniswami, Sarbananda Sonowal

The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) pulled off a spectacular victory in a high-stakes electoral battle, trouncing BJP to form the government for a third consecutive term in West Bengal. In the hotly contested Nandigram seat, BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari defeated his former party chief Mamata Banerjee though.

In Tamil Nadu son and the sun rise, MK Stalin become the state Chief Minister with the DMK-led alliance leading.

 In Kerala, the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government scripted history by retaining power, the first time in four decades that the same grouping will form the government for the second consecutive time. 

For the BJP, Assam emerged as the lone bright spot with the ruling NDA  retaining power in the state. Meanwhile, in Puducherry, the NDA looked set to form the government.

The elections were held amid a surge in Covid-19 cases across the country – a second wave that has ridden the country to an unprecedented crisis.

The last 2 phases of WB elections were held under the shadow of death & distress across the country and it was important to understand its impact on the results. Giles Verniers, a teacher and researcher at Ashoka University analyses this Covid effect. 

1. The vote share of BJP drops from 39% to 32% in the last two phases, a 7% drop. At the same time, TMC jumped from 47% to 52%, a swing of 5%. 

2. TMC makes its most impressive vote gains with the gap with BJP increasing to 13.5% and 11% in the last two phases. 

3. The voting in the last two phases is spread across 9 contiguous districts making it a pan WB demographics. 

4. In 2019, the BJP scored 35% of vote share across the Kolkatta city’s assembly segments, while the Trinamool was at 48%. This vote was 28% and 61% in 2021 indicating a surge for TMC and punishing BJP because of Covid.  mishandling. 

BJP would do well to manage the Covid crisis so that people see the difference. Else, they will face a west bengal like swing in other states too.

Lessons learnt. As long as BJP don't enter into a cease fire with Non BJP states, things will not go fine in India, what we need is a successful vaccine drive and peoples safety first. Modi can win a lamppost election for himself, it's a high command run party, they will have to rethink. In the North or the Hindi belt of India, all level of politicians eat money and nothing reach the lower level, while in the southern belt, the top level, takes money, but things are delivered to the poor, there is mid day meal, schools and hospitals. What the south need is not religious divide but unity. Never taunt a woman anywhere, ever....Modi-o-Modi, and all the blind bhakths. Learn to respect. 

Bengal 2021 was not a normal election. This was the most audacious political heist attempted in recent times. Bengal was the final frontier that the BJP needed to cross to consolidate its hegemony. And it chose this election to launch an all-out attack. It threw everything into it: money, media, organisational machine and, of course, Narendra Modi. While it shows the limits to dividends of communal polarisation, it is not a rejection of communal politics. If anything, the Bengal election has rekindled the pre-Partition communal fire that the state will have to deal with for a long time. Besides, mobilisation of anxious Muslim voters against the BJP is hardly a sign of secular politics.The biggest public health crisis of post-Independence India was not an electoral issue anywhere, except Kerala.

There cannot be two opinions about the real loser today: the Indian National Congress. The grand old party did not miss an opportunity to ensure it misses out on a regular opportunity to come back to power in Kerala, in the first Assembly election after Rahul Gandhi became an MP from the state. Similarly, in Assam, it allowed the BJP to come back to power despite massive anti-CAA protests in the state a year ago. It ceded power in Puducherry and sank to irrelevance in West Bengal. The message is as clear as it gets: the Congress in its current form cannot lead India in a battle to reclaim democracy

Everything; victories, defeats, right or wrong analysis, looks so hollow in comparison to the lives still being lost because of infrastructural failure. .....Assembly Election  2021, for me, it's Prasanth Kishore's Win👍 A hope for a different  tomorrow.  Better or new, I do not know. For the kind of change  in mindset in many of us.

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