Click to play videoNew Delhi: There are several surprises hidden in the state-wise patterns revealed by the HT-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey.
On the face of it, nothing seems to have changed since the last State of the Nation survey held in August 2006. But there are major changes at the state level. In the last five months, the Samajwadi Party has staged a recovery in Uttar Pradesh, nothwithstanding Nithari and Ghosi Khurd, to catch up with the Bahujan Samajwadi Party. The Congress, which rules Punjab, has also staged a recovery in this period.
The other surprise is in the rating of the Chief Ministers. At a point when the Congress is doing better than its own expectation, it is interesting to note that none of the top five Chief Ministers are from the Congress.
The top two, Orissa’s Naveen Patnaik and Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, are actually the allies of the BJP. The most significant change in the rating of the CMs is that sudden fall of Budhadeb Bhattacharya from the third rank to the ninth rank.
Clearly this has a lot to do with the timing of the survey, just a week after the Nandigram incident. The Left seems to have made up for his decline by the rise of V S Achutanandan, the Kerala CM. The publicity about his land seems to have cost Rajshekhar Reddy some of his popularity while Sheila Dixit has been severely affected by the sealing drive.
That the Jharkhand CM occupies the last rung would not surprise anyone, but the rapid rise of Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumarswamy is a surprise.
The popularity of the CM is in many cases a reflection of the popularity of the party in that state. Here the news for the BJP is not good.
CM popularity rating | |||
| Name of the CM | Rank Jan 2006 | Rank Aug 2006 | Rank Jan 2007 |
| Naveen Patnaik | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Nitish Kumar | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| V S Achutanandan | -- | 8 | 3 |
| M. Karunanidhi | -- | 4 | 4 |
| H D Kumaraswamy | -- | 16 | 5 |
| Tarun Gogoi | 7 | 5 | 6 |
| Narendra Modi | 6 | 6 | 7 |
| Capt. Amarinder Singh | 17 | 10 | 8 |
| Buddhadeb Bhattacharya | 2 | 3 | 9 |
| Rajasekhara Reddy | 5 | 7 | 10 |
| Bhupinder Singh Hooda | 12 | 11 | 11 |
| Shivraj Singh Chauhan | 18 | 14 | 12 |
| Vilasrao Deshmukh | 13 | 9 | 13 |
| Raman Singh | 9 | 12 | 14 |
| Mulayam Singh Yadav | 16 | 17 | 15 |
| Ghulam Nabi Azad | 11 | 18 | 16 |
| Vasundhara Raje Sindhia | 10 | 15 | 17 |
| Sheila Dikshit | 3 | 13 | 18 |
| Madhu Koda | -- | -- | 19 |
Contest among CMs
BJP leaders don’t impress
In all the states that it rules directly, the BJP has been losing support. In Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh the BJP faces a rout, while it has seen a sharp decline in Madhya Pradesh and some decline in Gujarat as well. The three states that provide some hope to the NDA are Bihar, Orissa and Karnataka. Interestingly the NDA partners in all these states are the erstwhile Janata Dal splinters.
The UPA is doing well in those states where it draws upon the erstwhile parties of the third front: the DMK and the NCP. The Congress’ former, the TRS, has registered its presence at the cost of the Congress in Andhra Pradesh, while the Congress on its own in Haryana is facing a decline. In Delhi the long run of the Congress faces a serious challenge now, perhaps more from court orders than the BJP.
The UPA seems to enjoying a rare moment in electoral cycles of the various states. While the logic of incumbency disadvantage has started working against the BJP state government, it has not affected the UPA state governments, at least not fully yet.
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