Modi’s rally at Bommanahalli aims to woo IT voters

The Hindu Loud speakers are being rigged up ahead of Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's visit to Bommanahalli in Bangalore on Monday. Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

He may pronounce his vision for Bangalore’s development: Ashok

Setting his eyes firmly on the techies of the country’s IT capital, Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is holding a rally near Electronics City on Tuesday evening.

A 20-acre plot at Bommanahalli near the Bangalore-Hosur Road will be the venue.

The party is keen on wooing the techies, who form a sizeable number of voters in Bangalore, as that may turn out to be a decisive factor in all the Lok Sabha seats in Bangalore.

Brisk preparations

The BJP is making brisk preparations for the rally. The former Deputy Chief Minister R. Ashok, who reviewed the preparations, cited two reasons for choosing Bommanahalli for the event. “The first reason is that we want to woo the IT community. Another reason: we want this rally to help not just the three seats of Bangalore North, South and Central, but also that of Bangalore Rural. Hence we chose this place as it is almost on the border of Bangalore city,” he said.

Mr. Ashok, who is spearheading the party’s campaign in Bangalore, said this rally could be a “game-changer” for the party’s prospects in the city seats. “As this is a rally which is devoted to Bangalore seats, Mr. Modi is likely to share his vision for the development of Bangalore,” he said.

He said about 12,000 people had registered as participants for the rally through online system. He said seating arrangements were being made for about one lakh people.

Early on Tuesday, Mr. Modi will address poll rallies at Koppal, Bagalkot and Mysore, before arriving at the Bommanahalli rally.

French voters punish Hollande in municipal vote

 

AP French Socialist Party deputy mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, right, and outgoing mayor Bertrand Delanoe smile after results were announced in the second round of the French municipal elections, in Paris on Sunday.

The French government was in full soul-searching mode on Sunday after the conservative opposition trounced the governing Socialist Party (PS) in a municipal election run-off that also yielded gains for the far-right National Front.

Voters across the country used the election for town councils and mayors to vent their frustration with President Francois Hollande’s failure to turn around the battered French economy.

From Reims in the north-east to Toulouse in the south-west and the central city of Limoges, PS mayors were shown the door as voters in dozens of municipalities decamped to former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).

Other cities that swung from left to right included Saint-Etienne, Pau and Angers. Paris, Lyon, Lille and Strasbourg bucked the trend by re-electing PS mayors, while voters in Marseille returned the UMP incumbent.

In Paris, Socialist Anne Hidalgo defeated the UMP’s Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, to become the capital’s first female mayor.

Elsewhere, the UMP was savouring its spoils, which come two months before European elections, in which the anti-immigration FN is tipped to place first or second.

Provisional results showed the UMP and other right-wing parties polling 45.91 per cent of the vote, compared with 40.57 per cent for left-wing parties, 6.84 per cent for the far right and 6.62 for independents.

“France’s top party is the UMP,” party leader Jean-Francois Cope declared.

The FN was also on the march, winning 14 or 15 municipalities according to the interior ministry, including the northern former coal mining town of Henin-Beaumont, which it won in the first round of voting on March 23.

Frejus and Beziers, two Mediterranean towns of more than 50,000 inhabitants that have been hard hit by the crisis, were among others to elect FN or FN-backed mayors.

FN leader Marine Le Pen, who has worked hard to rid the party of its extremist image, said the polls showed the party was now a viable alternative to the PS and UMP.

“Today the FN has shaken up the traditional UMP-PS duo,” she told supporters.

The party failed, however, to convert its first-round lead in some towns, such as the Forbach in the north-east, where FN vice president Florian Philippot was defeated by the Socialist incumbent, and Avignon, where the FN candidate also lost to the Socialist candidate.

Those wins provided little comfort for the Socialists, who were punished for the government’s failure to create jobs and growth, 22 months after Mr. Hollande took office.

Voter turnout plunged to a new record low on Sunday. Ipsos polling company estimated a turnout of 62 per cent, down from 63.6 per cent in the first round, which was already an historic low for a municipal election.

Apathy was particularly acute among left-wing voters, who have been disillusioned with Mr. Hollande’s shift from traditional leftist tax-and-spend policies to a more business-friendly approach.

Former Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal, who is the mother of Mr. Hollande’s four children, expressed alarm at the results, calling them a “very severe warning”.

Mr. Hollande, who is expected to reshuffle his cabinet in the coming days, promised during the week to “draw a lesson” from the results but has also vowed to stick to his current course of trying to restore lost competitiveness.

One of those whose position is seen as vulnerable is Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who acknowledged Sunday a share in the government’s “collective” responsibility for the election result.

“It’s a clear message which must be fully heard,” Mr. Ayrault said.

Women voters not fully registered, says study

ISLAMABAD: The issue of under-registration of women voters continuously shadowed the constitutionally promised universality and equal representation of the electorate in the 2013 general elections, albeit with varying intensity across regions.

“Of the 86.2m voters, 43.6 % were females compared to the 80m voters in 2008 with 44 % women voters,” said an analysis of the Free & Fair Election Network (Fafen).It has prepared a voluminous report, containing Parallel Vote Tabulations (PVT), compared to turnout and party trends of all the National Assembly constituencies.

The report said that at the provincial level, the ratio of man-woman voters has skewed further towards the male side in Punjab and Balochistan—percentages of female voters changed from 45.9 % to 2008 to 42.6 % in 2013 in Balochistan and dropped from 45 % in 2008 to 43.8 % in 2013 in Punjab.

The percentages of female voters have increased from 2008 to 2013 in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) from 30.1 % to 34.2 %, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) from 40.7 % to 42.8%, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) from 45.8 % to 46.3 % and more marginally in Sindh from 44.2 % to 44.8 %.

The report said a key issue observed in the last parliamentary polls was the disproportionate and significant increase in the number of rejected votes—the number, while increasing from 775,720 in 2002 to 973,694 in 2008, recorded a substantial raise of 64 % to reach 1,502,717 in the 266 constituencies observed.

It said that the issue of rejected voters is critical not merely due to the numbers but also given the skewed distribution across constituencies and regions—the numbers range from zero in NA-53 to 25,908 in NA-266.

The report said the distribution of rejected votes paints a somber picture in that only 27 of the 266 constituencies have fewer than 2,000 rejected votes. Of the rest, 78 constituencies have rejected votes from 2,000-5,000, 148 ranged in 5,001-10,000, and 10 fell in the 10,001 to 15,000 category while three constituencies had rejected votes exceeding 15,000.

From the results’ perspective, the issue is highlighted further by the fact that the number of rejected votes exceeds the margin of victory in 35 of the 266 constituencies covered in this report. Of these, the rejected votes outnumber the margin of win by less than 1,000 votes in six, indicating an acquired importance of rejected votes due to close competition.

In the other 29 constituencies, the number of rejected votes outweighs the margin of victory by as little as 1,140 (NA-153) and as many as 19,701 (NA-266).

The report said that the PVT compares the observed vote count in a sample of polling stations with the compiled election result for that constituency in order to provide evidence that confirms or disputes the official poll result.

It said the PVT methodology was developed over 20 years ago and has been applied in many countries around the world by international and domestic election monitoring organizations as a proven analytical method for verifying the accuracy of government vote counts. The PVT is based on direct observation of vote counting in a scientifically verifiable, robust sample of the polling stations in each constituency.

The report noted that although the PVT cannot measure other election-related problems like vote buying, voter intimidation, ballot box stuffing or the use of ghost polling stations, the PVTs are designed to identify potential inaccuracies in the official count by comparing it with actual observed and verified vote counts at sampled polling stations.

The PVT can help detect centralized changes in vote counts if the percentage of vote in official count offers in a statistically significant way from the percentages calculated from the PVT sample.

In cases in which electoral commissions release polling station level results, the PVT counts for sampled polling station and the commission’s polling station data can be compared directly.

Narendra Modi turns to Muslim voters

LUCKNOW: Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist leader tipped as India's next prime minister, appealed to Muslim voters on Sunday and hit out at rivals accusing him of bias against the country's largest religious minority.
Addressing hundreds of thousands of mainly Hindu supporters at a rally in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Modi said his economic policies meant Muslims were better off in Gujarat, the western state he governs, than other parts of India.
The rally in the state capital Lucknow, where a third of the population is Muslim, was attended by a sea of people clad in orange, the colour associated with Hinduism. The ground, which can hold some 400,000, was not totally full.
Modi, 63, has a strong lead in opinion polls ahead of the regionally phased general election voting due in April and May, but the surveys suggest he may still struggle to gather enough seats to form a government.
Muslim votes could help. "We believe in economic development, while you play the politics of votes, letting Muslims languish in poverty," Modi said, in a jibe at the government of Uttar Pradesh, which relies on Muslim support and has a poor development record.
Modi is dogged by allegations he did not stop religious riots in Gujarat over a decade ago, when at least 1,000 people, mainly Muslims, were killed in retaliation for the death of Hindu pilgrims in an attack on a train.
He denies the allegations and a Supreme Court inquiry concluded there was not enough evidence to try him.
WOOING MUSLIMS;
Modi's comments were his most direct attempt to woo Muslim voters since being named last year as the candidate of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or prime minister.
Hindu-Muslim relations have been a central part of Indian politics for centuries. The Hindu nationalist BJP made its name 20 years ago by whipping up tensions between the communities. Because of that history, most Indian Muslims are still wary of Modi, but some are convinced by his message of economic development for all.
"We want people to unite, if that happens, India will be much more prosperous and more secure for Muslims," said Amir Uddin, a scholar of Islam sporting a "Modi for PM" cap who travelled 200 km in a BJP bus to attend the rally.
Muslims are among the most economically deprived sections of Indian society. Hindus make up about 80 percent of India's population while Muslims account for some 13 percent. Modi's message is unlikely to win over Muslim voters in droves, but it may help convince other Indians who are drawn to his strong economic record but fear he is a divisive leader.
His speech came just a few days after BJP President Rajnath Singh made conciliatory remarks to Muslims, saying the party was ready to apologise for mistakes it may have made. He called on Muslims to give the BJP a chance.
FOCUS ON ECONOMIC RECORD:
Singh also struck a soft note on Sunday, making reference to Lucknow's religious tolerance in the 18th and 19th centuries under its Muslim Nawab rulers, who built a famous Hindu temple in the city.
Modi has roots in hard line pro-Hindu politics, but he has focused his election campaign almost entirely on his economic achievements in Gujarat, which has witnessed double-digit economic growth for a decade.
He has the strong support India's corporate sector and investors, who hope he will replicate Gujarat's economic model on a national scale.
On Sunday, Modi contrasted tension between religious communities in Uttar Pradesh, which has seen dozens of riots in the past two years, with a period of peace in Gujarat.
BJP leaders blame the spate of riots in Uttar Pradesh on the state government, run by the regional Samajwadi Party, but concede privately that the resulting polarisation has helped their party draw Hindu voters.
Dates for the general election are likely to be announced next week. A new government must be formed by the end of May.