 "Illustration by Binay Sinha")
Decisive electoral mandates, as in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh (UP), are a welcome trend. It denies “coalition compulsion” as an excuse for non-performance.
After fractured electoral verdicts during 1993-2007, UP returned single party absolute majorities to the Assembly in 2007 and 2012. But these two earlier verdicts were not as overwhelming as a single party’s victory in three quarters of the seats in 2017. Dismissing this verdict as only polarisation is an oversimplification. A lot more is at work.
The manifestoes of both the winner and the runner-up, namely the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), emphasised
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