The battlefor 91 parliamentary seats today – spanning across seven states, has literally thrown the political formations into proactive state.  The crucial seats which have all the potential to determine fate of parties in the remaining constituencies are Delhi, Haryana and Kerala and several in UP, Bihar, Odisha and Maharashtra. The right wing BJP requires the Modicharisma to build steam, whereas the centrist Congress needs to lessen the anticipated damage.

 If Modimanages to wrest record seats in these elections, it would impact its prospect in Delhi, Haryana, western UP, south Bihar and eastern Maharashtra where opinion polls indicate a saffron surge. A surge would be critical to the BJP reaching its target of 200-plus LokSabha seats, which would require a 70-80% strike rate in this round.

   The Congress is swimming upstream, and the BJP setting its target too high, the centrist party has but little choice to contend itself with a handful of seats in Delhi, Haryana and UP. In Delhi, it trips on a BJP upswing as well as AAP – which promises to guzzle some of its votes.

    In Haryana, the dabang CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his son Deepender, who have outsmartedthe statepoliticos, is now facing the unstoppable Modi juggernaut and the AAP populism. Both THE bjp as well as AAP,are using thediscontentmentof people over alleged preferential land allotments and favouritism as baits to catch voters. As the BJP track record is poor in the state, the BJP is majorly banking on the Modi effect.

In Bihar, the saffron party’s alliance with mercurial Ram Vilas Paswan has all the potential to click – given the robust social engineering at ground zero – Dalits plus suvarnavernas – the forward castes Hindus. JDU is already facing dissension from within; there is little scope for it to throw big surprise. If the right wing front fails to register any impressive result it will be difficult for it to come closer to 200 plus magic figure.

The BSP too has its share of concern, with a significant dalit voters leaning towards the BJP – thanks to the religious polarizationin Western Uttar Pradesh – post Muzaffarnagar violence.However, the BSP vote is hard to split as its followerscommonlymaintain a low profile, but are all the same determined voters.