The satta bazaar went on a roller-coaster ride during the last 72 hours before the results were declared. In the early stages of the campaign, the odds were heavily stacked against the Congress and most people were putting their money on the BJP. After exit polls suggested the Congress was on a comeback trail following the first round of voting, the odds were evenly balanced. The second round of exit polls, which gave Mr Modi a narrow victory margin, saw the odds tilting against the BJP. In the last 72 hours, there was heavy betting with punters putting their money on a Congress win. Newspaper estimates suggest that the bets amounted to Rs 2,400-crore. In the event, those who placed their money on the Congress lost heavily. Some people, though, have made a killing.
Congress’ dismal track record in Gujarat
Arun jaitly says:
since 1985, the Congress has not won a majority in Gujarat, either in the Assembly or in the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress has consistently lost every Assembly and Lok Sabha election. In five consecutive elections since 1990, Congress rivals — on four occasions the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and on one occasion the BJP and the Janata Dal — won nearly two-thirds of the Assembly seats. Except for West Bengal, the Congress has not had such a bad track record in any other state.
Media got it all wrong
Here’s a state in which five out of six regions give a party a 14 per cent lead, yet not one reporter in this country caught it.
Failure of National Media more than the regional one
What you have to do is switch to the regional TV channels. They have reporters at every counting centre and get it right. So while the national channels were showing BJP 40, Congress 30 in the first hour and a half, ETV Gujarati already had BJP 111, Congress 55.
Is the EC biased?
Arun Jaitly says:
The moment Modi gave a reply (to Sonia Gandhi’s comment), the Election Commission issued him a notice within 24 hours. For the next three days there was no notice to either Digvijay Singh or to Sonia Gandhi. Digvijay’s statement was reported in some (sections of the) electronic and print media and Sonia Gandhi’s was reported extensively. This was something the Election Commission had to take suo motu cognisance of. The commission, incorrectly, told the media that it had not taken note of these two speeches because it had not received a complaint.
Winnability factor
Any party will use whatever ‘winnability’ factors it has in an election. When Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leader we used his personality to improve our chances. When Mrs (Indira) Gandhi was the Congress party leader, they used her personality to win an election.
Also, the 2004 elections made one thing very clear: a national election is the net aggregate of state polls. The nucleus of an alliance is one of the two principal parties. If you have a strong nucleus you’ll have a strong United Progressive Alliance (UPA) or a strong NDA built around it. If you have weak Congress or a weak BJP, then you have a United Front kind of an experiment. The nucleus party must be strong enough to attract more allies.
Modi is Pro-women
In the last year, Modi came out with two schemes for women: the first scheme was that any girl child who goes to school will have a fixed deposit in her name. When she reaches Std VIII, she’ll get the amount with interest. The dropout rate collapsed. So he provided an incentive for the education of the girl child. Second, he got private sector medical practitioners, gynaecologists, to deliver children in women’s homes and paid them for it. So infant mortality and maternal death rate came down. Modi didn’t announce the scheme: he held at least 28 women conferences, attended by 50,000-60,000 women each. He used his entire political and governmental machinery in every district for this.
There are 16 women elected to the Assembly of which 15 are from the BJP.
Chidambaram accuses Modi of bad fiscal management
the Modi administration managed its fiscal affairs so badly that the State had run up an accumulated debt burden from Rs. 45,301 crore in 2001 to over Rs. 94,009 crore this year, and earned the dubious distinction of being one of the six “highly indebted States.” The others were West Bengal, Punjab, Rajasthan, Kerala and Maharashtra.
Gujarat spent a mere 31 per cent of the budgetary allocations for the social sector, ignoring the needs of the poor, marginal farmers and the other weaker sections, Mr. Chidambaram said.
Refuting Mr. Modi’s allegations of discrimination, he claimed that in the last four years since the UPA government came to power, the Centre had given Gujarat Rs. 14,000 crore as its share in Central taxes and about Rs. 10,000 crore towards plan and non-plan expenditure. This was “the highest amount paid to the State by the Centre” for any four-year block since Independence.
Moily on Modi
Congress media committee chairman Veerappa Moily on Friday described party president Sonia Gandhi as “Goddess Durga” and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as a “demon.”
“The major terrorist attacks — be it on the Akshardham temple, Parliament, the Raghunath temple and Amarnath pilgrims — took place during the National Democratic Alliance regime and despite POTA being in place. The demolition of the Babri Masjid, the Kargil war … with these incidents, India became vulnerable.”
Allegations and counter allegations – ad war
There were also two insertions by the newly-created “Brahmins Utkarsha Samiti” appealing to vote out the “anti-Brahmin” Chief Minister, and expressing doubts about the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s consent to publishing an advertisement with his appeal on Thursday to vote for Mr. Modi. The Bharatiya Janshakti Party also appealed to the people to vote against the Modi government.
Mr. Modi, at his public meetings on Friday in Kaira and other central Gujarat constituencies, promptly picked up the Masood Azhar issue and said the publication of the advertisement was proof of the Congress having “lost its head and sense of balance.”
He said it only proved that the Congress had no sentiments for the passengers aboard the plane hijacked to Afghanistan by terrorists.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, that earlier made its stand clear, inserted another advertisement in support of Mr. Modi. But most surprising was an advertisement in the name of a couple of voluntary organisations, which did not talk of any election but recalled the “sacrifices” made by many volunteers for protecting “cows and other innocent animals” during the Bakri-Idd.”
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