INDIA’S Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party are making a serious bid for electoral victories in three states that have sizeable minority Muslim populations.
But the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has for years been accused of stoking religious polarisation and discriminating against minorities, and faces stiff challenges in making inroads in the local elections.
Top BJP leaders, including Modi, have been campaigning heavily to win West Bengal and dislodge the state’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, as well as retain power in northeastern Assam and expand the party’s influence in the southern states.
The BJP has soared in Hindu-dominated regions in central and northern India since Modi was elected in 2014.
The upcoming state elections are seen as crucial for the party to gain a foothold in the northeast and south.
The prime minister also wants to project the BJP as a national party, replacing a dynastic Congress party that governed India for more than six decades after independence from British rule in 1947.
The run-up to the elections — which begin Saturday and are spread over a month, with results to be declared on May 2 — has been nothing short of dramatic.
In West Bengal, rival groups have attacked each other with sticks and rocks, and even set vehicles on fire.
Images of the fiery and determined Banerjee, 66, who’s been addressing massive crowds from a wheelchair after a leg injury, have set the tone for a tough battle.
The elections also come as tens of thousands of farmers have rattled Modi’s government with months long protests on the fringes of the capital, New Delhi.
And India’s economy, which was battered by the pandemic, is still struggling to emerge out of the crisis — another pivotal challenge for Modi, who came into office partly on
