Lok Sabha poll dates in: Why all eyes will be on these 10 regions

WHILE THERE are several issues which are expected to play out in the coming Lok Sabha polls, it may boil down to a fight between ‘Modi Ki Guarantee’ vs Congress’s ‘Nyay’ guarantees.

On Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s website, ‘Modi Ki Guarantee’ is described as a guarantee for the “development of youth”, “empowerment of women”, “welfare of farmers”, and “progress of the marginalised and vulnerable ignored for decades”, via saturation distribution of its welfare schemes.

The Congress has so far announced 25 guarantees, building up on similar promises which, it believes, helped it notch up wins in state polls in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana. These include 5 ‘Nyay’ guarantees for youth, women and farmers each, and 10 more announced on Saturday. Most of these were unveiled over the course of Rahul Gandhi’s Manipur-to-Mumbai Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.

Apart from the guarantee vs guarantee narrative, the issues which are likely to come up in the campaign are unemployment and price rise, which the INDIA bloc parties have been consistently raising; abrogation of Article 370, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the start of the process towards a Uniform Civil Code, all of which the Modi government has initiated since its 2019 win; the Ram Mandir consecration, which is fulfillment of one of the BJP’s core promises; electoral bonds data, released in the run-up to the polls and giving a clear indication of how money donations were influenced by power and the use of it; and farmers’ issues, with the recent protest set to make MSP a poll topic.

Against the above issues, these will be the 10 things to watch out for in the polls, region-wise:

Of the 129 Lok Sabha seats spread across five states – Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka,