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COVER STORY:
EXCLUSIVE OPINION POLL
LEADERS IN CRISIS
The INDIA TODAY-ORG-MARG
opinion poll last January was Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's wake-up
call. He chose to put the alarm clock on snooze and thereby accelerated
the decline in his Government's popularity. As he prepares to address
the nation from the Red Fort for the fourth year in succession, he does
so with the knowledge that his personal popularity has fallen dramatically
and that the main opposition party, the Congress, is-for the first time
since the onion crisis of December 1998-electorally ahead of the BJP and
its allies. The Congress and its allies are, in fact, within smelling
distance of an outright majority. In January, there was a net swing of
1.5 per cent for the Congress and against the BJP-led alliance over the
1999 outcome; in eight months the swing has nearly doubled to reach 3.8
per cent.
The decline in the BJP's fortunes has not been
uniform. It looks like losing its pre-eminent status in Gujarat and Delhi
but retaining it in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In conjunction with
allies, it is ahead in Bihar, Jharkhand and appears to have regained some
lost ground in Uttar Pradesh. In Orissa, the BJP-BJD alliance remains
on a high. The exact opposite is true of Haryana. In Andhra Pradesh, the
Telugu Desam-BJP alliance seems likely to benefit from Congress votes
going towards the advocates of a separate Telengana state.
Of course, Vajpayee can take comfort from the
fact that he is still the clear leader in the prime ministerial stakes,
despite a staggering 13 per cent fall in popularity in two years. Apart
from Kerala, he leads the leader of the Opposition in all states, including
Karnataka, Assam, Haryana and Punjab, where the Congress is on a strong
wicket. Indeed, the pattern of inverse correlation between Congress success
and Sonia Gandhi's own popularity has never been more marked. Sonia's
own popularity is now at its lowest point since December 1998-a truly
novel phenomenon for a resurgent opposition.
All of which seem to confirm the suspicion that
it is a crisis of leadership for the Government and a leaderless advantage
for the Congress. If the trends persist, the unreal arrangement seems
set to be overturned in both formations.
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