Countdown begins: Stage set for semi-finals before 2019 Lok Sabha elections
The BJP faces a Congress challenge in 3 states it rules. A total of five states which are going to polls between November 12 and December 7.
The Election Commission of India has announced the schedule for assembly elections in the states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Mizoram and Telangana. While first four assemblies are completing five-year tenures, elections in Telangana, India’s youngest state, are being held because the incumbent government has opted for early elections.
This set of assembly polls will be the last major election cycle before the general elections in 2019. While it will be hazardous to extrapolate the results of these elections to guess what will happen in 2019, they will definitely play a major role in setting the mood.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) achieved big victories in the 2013 assembly polls in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and it went on to significantly improve its performance in terms of both seat share and vote share.
One statistic captures this phenomenon. The Bharatiya Janata Party won 72.5 per cent of assembly seats in these three states in 2013. This increased to 95.4 per cent of the total Lok Sabha seats in these three states in 2014. (Chart 1: seat share and vote share of Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress in 2013 and 2014)
More than 40 per cent of the population in all these three states belongs to Other Backward Classes. More than 30 per cent of Chhattisgarh’s population comprises of Scheduled Tribes. These statistics are from the 2015-16 National Family and Health Survey (NFHS). (Chart 2: social composition of states)
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Traditionally, all three states -- Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh have been known to be relatively socio-economically backward.
The 2015-16 National Family and Health Survey shows that Madhya Pradesh , Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh have bettered their performance on some important indicators such as the share of anaemic women in the overall population.
The three states mostly lag behind on indicators such as infant mortality rate (the number of deaths per 1,000 live births of children under one year of age) and proportion of undernourished children.
Also, all the three states have a lower per capita income than the all-India average.
