Indian elections battleground mapVoting in the Indian election takes place in five phases from 16 April - 13 May. The result is announced on Saturday 16 May. Click on the buttons below to see which states vote when.
 UTTAR PRADESH Seats: 80 Once a Congress Party stronghold, India's most populous state is now dominated by two caste-based parties, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Dalit (formerly untouchable) leader Mayawati, and the Samajwadi Party (SP) of Mulayam Singh Yadav, which draws support from lower castes and Muslims. The two parties won 54 seats between them in 2004, while Congress and the BJP won 19 between them.
Acute poverty, rising crime, poor infrastructure and abysmal healthcare are the biggest problems in the state, often referred to as India's Hindi heartland. Mayawati's BSP is looking to repeat its sweeping victory in 2007 state elections. It has assiduously cultivated upper-caste Hindus to refashion itself as a rainbow coalition of high and low castes. Mayawati has ambitions to become a pan-Indian leader and could be a crucial player in coalition negotiations once the votes are counted. It is even possible she could emerge as prime minister at the head of a Third Front of communist and left-wing parties.
BIHAR Seats: 40 Bihar is renowned as one of India's poorest and most lawless states. Two regional parties - the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Janata Dal United (JDU) - dominate the political landscape. Both have links with the country's main political parties, the RJD with Congress, and the JDU with the BJP. In 2004, the RJD, led by the flamboyant Laloo Yadav, picked up more than half of the state's seats, while the JDU managed only six. Mr Yadav went on to become railway minister in the Congress-led government. He has been credited with turning around India's ailing train network. But the tables have turned since 2004. The JDU and BJP swept state polls in 2005, with JDU leader Nitish Kumar cashing in on popular disenchantment with the RJD government and the deteriorating law and order situation. To make things worse for the Congress, its alliance with RJD has collapsed this time over distribution of seats. In a curious political twist, the RJD is now contesting the election in alliance with another UPA partner, Lok Janashakti Party (LJP). So the main battle in Bihar this time is between the JDU-BJP alliance and RJD-LJP alliance. Deserted by its allies, Congress has been reduced to a small player.Bihar needs to catch up with the rest of India - and jobs, development, infrastructure and security are what its voters demand.
TAMIL NADU Seats: 39 One of India's most economically developed states - and one of its most politically volatile. Known as India's Detroit for its car making, it also has a strong services sector and a booming film industry. The main contest will be between two of India's most powerful regional parties, the DMK and the AIADMK. Since the 1960s, regional parties have tapped into nascent Tamil nationalism and lower caste aspirations. M Karunanidhi, an astute scriptwriter, heads the DMK, which governs the state. Pitted against him is a controversial former actress, the feisty J Jayalalitha, who leads the AIADMK. The dominance of these two personality-driven parties is so great that no national party has been able to make substantial political headway in Tamil Nadu in the last three decades. In 2004 the DMK coalition swept every seat. But Tamil Nadu is considered a swing state. Whoever wins there is likely to play an important role in the forming of India's new coalition government.
ANDHRA PRADESH Seats: 42 Andhra Pradesh is marked by extreme affluence - there are vast farms and a burgeoning info-tech and services industry - and desperate poverty. The state also faces a separatist movement in the poverty-ridden Telangana region. State and federal elections are both taking place here, with a keen contest in prospect between the ruling Congress Party and the main opposition alliance, led by the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) with the support of the communists. Andhra Pradesh was a Congress stronghold until the TDP emerged in the 1980s. In 2004, a Congress-led alliance swept the polls, winning 37 seats. Five years earlier an alliance between the TDP and the BJP had taken 36. Congress is banking this time on schemes like cheap rice, free electricity for farmers, free health cover for poor families and cheap loans for women. Meanwhile, Chandrababu Naidu, the TDP leader hailed in the West as a mascot of economic reforms, is promising free electricity and television sets and unemployment benefit. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7968638.stm |
__._,_.___