India elects new Government

The largest democracy of the World, India begins countingits votes to elect a new government ending a vitriolic campaign which left the entire society more scarredand polarized in regional and caste line with BJP predicted to sweep the generalelection again.

As the EVMs are being taken out of the strong room, countingabout to start, the BJP is gung ho and debate is no longer who is form the nextgovernment. But the question in everyone's mind is BJP with brute majority ornot brute majority.

The exit poll have predicted 300 plus figure for NDA andcomplete rout of Congress in the North East India too.

The North east India which has 25 seats is expected to giveNDA 20+ seats and they are pretty confident to it. Although the campaigning wasnoisy and well fought but Exit poll have predicted a pretty one sided picture  saying that it was a pro Modi vote.

The BJP as a party is happy but privately not euphoric asthe party has gone to back burner. It is the Modi-Shah era and almost all topguns of the BJP are sidelined leaving the field wide open for Modi-Shah for yearsto come.

Over the last five years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasbeen credited with trying to tighten the administration, a strong foreignpolicy and high-profile campaigns like Swachh Bharat and make-in-India. But hehas been attacked by the opposition over a slowing economy, failure to createjobs, a farm sector crisis and rising hate crimes by right-wing fringe groups.Buoyed by the exit poll estimates, the BJP has prepped a blueprint for its nextterm, built around the three themes of nationalism, national security anddevelopment.

The vitriolic campaign over the last months has seenpolarisation in terms of religion, caste, sections, communities and economicgroups. A tweak in the narrative came after the February 14 terror strike inJammu and Kashmir's Pulwama in which 40 soldiers were killed, and the airstrikes at Pakistan's Balakot that followed.

Overnight, the BJP built its campaign around the theme ofnational security and nationalism, and only later, added development to it. TheCongress, which kept its focus on the bread and butter issues – farm sector,jobs and economy – and the controversy over the government's purchase of 36Rafale jetfighters, was accused of neglecting the nation's security and itsarmed forces.