...In the classical style in which the Congress (I) has fought the elections and won them has been its total dependence on the Muslim and Harijan votes, to put it rather bluntly.

It has always won with around 42% of popular votes, of which the bulk has been contributed by the Muslim and Harijan voters. It is noteworthy that whenever Muslim voters have been uncertain in their mind, such as in 1977 and 1989 the first time because of the excesses of the Emergency and the second on the ambivalent Congress(I) attitude on the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babari Masjid issue - the party has been defeated at the husting.

This, then, is the basic point, and in any analysis of the party's electoral prospects this factor looms large on the horizon. Has the Congress (I) been able to recapture its hold on the Muslim mind which will see it through a victory?

Clearly, Muslim votes have come to be divided in course of the years. They are no longer voting solidly in favour of one party. The Congress (I), presumably, retains a hold over a section, mainly of those traditionally attached to the party, but younger voters have probably travelled out of its orbit. In 1977, Muslims had quit in anger, but in 1989 most of them chose deliberately to be on the side of the Janata Dal, and gave it a big boost. The Congress(I) was still the larger party, but its citadel was cracking... The question now is which way will the Muslim votes, or the bulk of them go in the May elections?

...The National Front (of which Janata Dal led by... V.P. Singh, is a part) ... has forged a formidable combination of the backward castes and the Muslims.

It has turned out to be a 'dreadful' combination in the eyes of its opponents. V.P. Singh is probably getting into the consolidation of the Bahujan Samaj Party as well. The BSP leader, Mr. Kanshi Ram, had fought against him in the Allahabad by-election in 1988, and had secured a thumping 70,000 votes. The BSP has grown in strength ever since and if... V.P. Singh is able to put together these potent political forces, theoretically at least he will have made a mark, and score significantly in the midterm poll....

There is also little doubt that the BJP is bound to take advantage of the 'Mandir' issue, and the clarion call of 'Hindutva' that it has sounded over the length and breadth of India, especially in north India....

Only election time will, however, show whether the BJP... will push up its strength from 90 in the outgoing Lok Sabha to something beyond “accentuated by the presence in the fray of the BJP in a big way…. without the support of a substantial proportion of the backward castes and Muslims, who account for 60 percent of the State’s population, the LDF could not have trounced the Congress-I.

… Marginal factors… cannot obscure the national-level significance of the impressive dividends that the advocacy of castebased reservation and secularism has yielded.

(Source : The Hindustan Times, 4 Feb. 91)