Watch Nidhi Razdan: Who will win Assembly Elections 2023 in India?

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00:00So, to use a cliché, the election bugle has truly been sounded with the Election Commission

00:08of India announcing the poll schedule for five states in the next couple of months.

00:13Counting is going to be in December, and many are describing these polls as a semi-final

00:18in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election next year.

00:21I would however beg to disagree on that, simply because increasingly we have seen that Indian

00:26voters are making a distinction between how they vote at the state level, where often

00:30more local issues and local leaders take precedence, over how they vote at the national level,

00:36where perhaps different issues and different leaders are on their minds.

00:41If you look at the very states that are going to the polls now in the next few months, Rajasthan,

00:45Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, all of them actually voted the Congress into power back

00:50in December 2018.

00:52But just a few months later, when the Lok Sabha polls were held, it was the BJP that

00:56got a resounding victory in these very states.

01:00So that's one note of caution.

01:01However, these polls will test a couple of things.

01:05One is the India alliance, because this will essentially be the first real test on the

01:10ground in a big way to see how the opposition alliance is going to be able to work on the

01:14ground and whether they can succeed in the general elections as well.

01:18And also, there are a couple of issues on which the ground and the mood will be tested.

01:24And amongst those is the caste census, which has become such a hot button topic after the

01:28Bihar caste survey.

01:30So these elections will certainly be interesting.

01:33They may not be a semi-final, but they will certainly set the tone.

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