With around one month remaining for LS polls it is high time to look into the strategies of different parties to woo voters so as try to extra polate who among them seem to have a higher chance to win parliament?. As is already known to the readers of this article( obviously interested in politics) the frontline candidates for the throne at delhi are BJP and Congress .The other contenders are AAP and Third front. As is evident from the election manifesto and the advertisements released in social media , it is mostly interested to project itself as development oriented party and dissociate itself from its former image of hindutva and Babri masjid demolition. Well the strategy of the party is very practical and given Narendra modi s good record as CM of Gujrat in the field of development will aid it .However , what perhaps has aided this strategy the most is that its primary rival that is Congress is itself afflicted with numerous slurs of corruption , lack of development and communal tensions . The 1984 riots during congress regime once again put Congress at a difficult spot as it blunted the traditional congress weapon of puting communal image on BJP so as to consolidate Muslim vote bank which is pivotal for a party to win the elections .

Before going further into discussing other parties strategies and how effective they might be , first lets look at who the voters are. India as a whole is home to 123 crore people out of which 16.5 crore are scheduled castes and .7 crore are scheduled tribes and OBC forms around 52% of the population. The entire population is divided into 35 states and union territories. Muslims being 13.4% of the population mostly play a make or break role for most political parties ambitions . Now if u add up OBC , Muslim , SC/ST vote banks then it comes out to be around 70% of the indian population hence is the chunk which all political parties seek to woo , some via quotas and some via representation and talks on empowerment. In this election unlike unlike ever before the number of parties competing for this segment is very high . It includes SP , BSP , TMC , AAP , Congress , BJD , TDP and so on . As a result there would certainly be a lot of divisions of the votes among this categories. Upper caste vote bank usually votes for BJP and the trend is unlikely to change . Maybe AAP can eat into that vote bank to some extent but then significant amount would still be retained. In general for a party to emerge winner around 37% vote share is needed . So to put it straight as of now chances for BJP seems strongest given Narendra Modi’s OBC background and BJP is traditional vote share of 25% ( mostly among upper castes) . Since TMC has put candidates in delhi and other regions too alongside Congress and other regional parties the Muslim , SC/ST vote bank is bound to split.

Now coming back to AAP to Strategy , AAP as a party became popular on the ground that it was resembling common people and portrayed an image of being a speaker from among the people further accentuated by a social activist as its supremo . Now for a start up it was doing really well but the strategy does not hold water for a prolonged period of time as india has multiple issues like safety to women, illegal mining , terrorism , high food prices , divide between rural and urban voters , lack of education , lack of jobs , lack of industrialization , sick PSU s apart from corruption which is the primary issue AAP seek to address. The problem of this strategy of doing an issue based politics is that the party becomes redundant after that issue is fulfilled hence things like development (which have a broader ambit ) are much better and more beneficial . The stint that AAP had as part of government and the dharnas it did during its rule along with numerous unplanned speeches which were widely criticized in media ( Specially the one that Kashmir was not part of India) , the special incentives to people who participate in dharna brought out a bad image of the party , the way it quit the government showed instability too .As its last bid , Kejriwal s public tirade with Mukesh Ambani was more of market signaling towards its depleting base of workers who were losing interest in the noise created around the party. Be it BJP Congress joining hands to not let AAP pass Jan lok pal ( although it was considered controversial bill with multiple flaws) or Be it AAP failure to put forward a progressive image of the government from a developmental angle or job creation angle leading to resentment among the masses , the chariot of 2014 elections seems to have drifted away from AAP for the time being . Numerous Surveys have already seemed to indicate BJP being single largest party followed by Congress and TMC .

Although surveys need not necessarily prove to be true specially due to the vote splits that would result and influence the election results .Besides sample size of surveys are limited , in election it will be multiple times larger set , the trend in one set need not reflect in the other sets too. But it is more or less evident that the student section are more influenced by need for jobs and development than by the Congress’s focus on holistic development and reservation politics. Result of all this maybe hidden in the recent past which has witnessed multiple scams from congress. While BJP s past of hindutva and Congs past of corruption seem to be the most critical hinges that has hold back a road to absolute majority on the contrary a past less AAP is suffering from self afflicted unrealism. Hence I feel regional forces may be the deciding force for next elections Mamta Banerjee or Jai lalitha or Mulayam Singh as PM cannot be discounted . However , it is NAMO who is leading !