India Today opinion poll on Delhi, Rajasthan, MP & Chhattisgarh assembly elections

India-Today opinion poll on the assembly election bound states: Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Three-time BJP leaders are poised to win in three of the four states that go to Assembly polls soon. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit remains the lone warrior for the Congress

Delhi:- Three-time Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit remains the most popular choice for Delhi's top job, never mind the Commonwealth Games scam, soaring power prices and spate of rapes that has dogged her latest term in office. But her personal popularity might not be enough to carry Congress home for the fourth straight time. The India Today Group-CVoter survey puts both Congress and BJP at 28 seats apiece while Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) gets nine in its electoral debut. Those numbers can only mean one thing: The next Delhi government will be one of strange bedfellows. The survey finds the Congress's vote share sliding to 33 per cent from 40 per cent in 2008, resulting in an overall loss of 15 seats. Senior Delhi Congress leader Mukesh Sharma uses Dikshit's popularity as the counter argument:

If 40 per cent of the people want Dikshit to be chief minister, then definitely they would vote for her. In that case, the vote percentage would rise. Congress's loss isn't, however, BJP's gain, with the principal Opposition party getting a 35 per cent vote share, down 1 per cent from 2008. In fact, Kejriwal pips Delhi BJP state President Vijay Goel to become Delhi's second most popular chief ministerial choice. "It's significant that within a short span of eight months, Arvind is challenging the chief minister of 15 years," says senior AAP leader Manish Sisodia. Goel won't agree Kejriwal is a factor at play. "Show me one agitation in Delhi led by AAP in the last six months," he says, claiming, "The power stirs, slum movements and Dalit sammelans have helped us gain new ground."

Rajasthan:- Ashok Gehlot's last-ditch attempt in the autumn of his full five-year term to turn the tide and return to power seems doomed. According to the survey, a resurgent Vasundhara Raje-led BJP is set for a near-simple majority in the Assembly elections in December. The 97 seats projected for the Opposition party, however, fall short of its own assessment of 125 seats in the 200-member House.

The Gehlot-led Congress government's bouquet of schemes and Rs.2,000 crore in freebies rolled out in the recent past fall flat on various counts. Firstly, cash in lieu of saris and blankets to the poor and the attempt to expand the free medicines scheme fivefold by supplying generics would appeal to sections that already form part of the established Congress vote bank. The Chief Minister's attempt to target upper-caste poor through the pension scheme could also end up antagonising the taxpaying public. "My uncle who retired from a Central Government job has started getting Rs.500 a month in pension despite owning a Rs.50-lakh house. He is happy but as a taxpayer, I feel cheated," says a Rajasthan Administrative Service officer.

"We should be doing better than what you are predicting because of good implementation of our schemes," claims Satyendra Raghav, Rajasthan Congress spokesperson. But the schemes have often not reached target beneficiaries, something Raje chose to highlight during her Suraj Sankalp Yatra in May-August apart from charges of rampant government corruption. While concluding her yatra in Alwar district, she asked the crowd if there were even five doctors in the local hospital against the sanctioned 13. The audience shouted in unison that there were only two. Such a connect also sees her emerge as the runaway favourite among people surveyed, 42 per cent choosing her as opposed to 25 per cent opting for Gehlot. "Voters cannot be influenced through sops by a government which slept for 54 months," says Raje.

Madhya Pradesh:- On August 13, drenched crowds wait patiently on the roadside at Shyamgarh in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur district to catch a glimpse of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on a Jan Ashirwad Yatra (a tour for people's blessings). As Chouhan's vehicle arrives, they shower petals on him and shout slogans like "Aandhi nahin toofan hai, Shivraj Singh Chouhan hai (It's not a storm, it's a hurricane; it's Shivraj Singh Chouhan)". The BJP leader has covered 1,329 km over 48 constituencies by then, addressing 120 meetings from a specially designed stage on his vehicle. The overwhelming response to his yatra manifests his popularity, which according to the survey is 57 per cent-the highest among all leaders in Madhya Pradesh. "The response to my yatra shows BJP is set to make a grand comeback," he says. "People are happy with the government's performance." The survey supports Chouhan's optimism. It predicts BJP will bag 122 out of the 230 Assembly seats.

Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh refuses to accept the survey's projections. "The elections in November are bound to see BJP's exit," he says, adding that enormous public money is being wasted on the stage-managed Jan Ashirwad Yatra-something the voters will not forgive. BJP is sending senior leaders to assess the ground reality in the state before announcing poll candidates. Unwilling to be outdone on this front at least, the Congress is exercising due care in selecting its candidates as well.

Chhattisgarh:- Chief Minister Raman Singh says his government is poised to score a comfortable hat-trick. "The good work, development initiatives and pro-poor policies undertaken over the past 10 years will see us through," he says confidently. The BJP leader looks calm during public appearances. But he is leaving no stone unturned to lure voters, sensing a hard-fought BJP-Congress battle in the offing. Singh's principal opponent, Ajit Jogi, the state's first chief minister and senior Congress leader, has a drastically different take on their respective poll prospects. Seated in a wheelchair and clad in a kurta-pyjama, Jogi tells india today that the electoral outcome will surprise many. massive corruption at the grassroots-in district and block offices-has left the common man disillusioned with the BJP in the state. "We will form government," he said.

The Congress being a divided house could be another factor-just as the late Vidya Charan Shukla's revolt against Jogi had hurt the party badly in 2003, the situation is no different this time. BJP, on the other hand, appears united and is said to be considering replacements for 20 sitting MLAs to beat anti-incumbency. In 2008, the party had denied tickets to 18 MLAs. The survey, however, says Raman Singh is unlikely to reap an electoral dividend from his populist scheme, the Chhattisgarh Food Security Act, 2012, touted as being superior to the Centre's Food Security Act as it covers 90 per cent of the state's population.