Punjab, Goa in poll centres: Crucial elections begin today

In order to register their opinion about the ruling centre and state governments, the voters of Punjab and Goa are in the poll stations today. Even if the regional election results cannot be considered as the national opinion, some vested political interest groups are purposefully portraying the election as a referendum on the central government’s policies, like demonetisation, says expert. At this moment, we cannot predict who will gain from this strategy, added the expert. The poll in 117 assembly seats of Punjab has begun at 8 am today, while the poll in 40 assembly seats of Goa has commenced from 7 am.

The noteworthy fact is that in both the states BJP is the ruling party. In Punjab, for nearly a decade, the SAD-BJP front has been ruling the state where the anti-incumbency is relatively very high compared to the other four states going to poll in this month. Meanwhile, in Goa, the situation is much more comfortable. Even if the BJP government is ruling Goa for last five years, with the guardianship of the Union Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar, the BJP is expecting nothing less than a victory. Anyway, in both the states, the main contesters other than the BJP are Congress and AAP. When the Congress is aiming to regain their lost pride, the AAP is targeting to set up some new forts. However, as the opposition parties unanimously try to cash in the anti-incumbency factor and the anti-saffron slot, a question arises which one of the opposition will enjoy the people’s trust. We have to wait until March 14 to get a clear answer to these disturbing questions.

Vignesh

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