-Rajesh Tyagi/ 10.12.2017
First phase of polls to Gujarat Assembly is over yesterday with a heavy 68% turnout of voters. Poll results will be announced on December 18.
Polls were scheduled to take place on 9 and 14 of this month for 182 seats in the unicameral Assembly, out of which 13 are reserved for scheduled castes and 27 for schedule tribes.
In view of the heavy voter churnout, Psephologists would predict an anti-incumbency wave. Albeit the corporate media is potraying a clear win for BJP in the polls.
Since the announcement of the polls, the two rightwing parties of the Indian elite, Congress and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), have resorted to a dogfight raking up the issues that hardly relate to the needs of the workers and toilers. Both parties have made zealous efforts to sideline these issues to appeal to most backward sentiments of the electorate based on caste and religion. Issues like widening gap between the rich and the poor, price hike, communalism, rising crime, widening unemployment etc. have been put on backburner.
