I am not a firm believer of Daily Horoscopes but I don’t mind giving it a look, every morning, if I am not too busy. That is precisely the approach I have for most opinion polls as well. Over the last few years, I have seen them go wrong several times. They tend to be correct when vote difference is substantially high but go hay-wire in marginal cases. And this time because of delimitation the ball-game has changed. Still, no harm, if we could pick up a tip or two from there.

So far, most polls & surveys are pointing that Congress should re-emerge the Single largest party and UPA has a combination may be closest to form the government with support of other parties. However, what is significant and worrying is, that most of these polls project the individual tally of Congress party almost near the 145 mark, the total number of that the party won in 2004. And in the same fashion, the projections for BJP which had 138 seats last time is also close to 140. Let us for a while, assume this to be correct and do a reverse engineering as to what we could learn from here and take a corrective action.

Even though there is no special rule for the single largest party but it is always the preferred status in a worst case scenario. My personal projection stands at around 175-180 seats for Congress alone. Congress is apparently gaining in states like Kerala, Orissa and Rajasthan. It is by and large holding on to its position in most other states including Andhra Pradesh. But then where is the gap?

I feel it is important to focus on the key states where Congress and BJP have a straight fight and all other forces, be it allies or the third - fourth fronts not too significant. These States i.e. Delhi, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal have a total of 107 seats. In 2004, BJP bagged 75 seats while the Congress managed only 31 seats. Any gains made in these states would be at the cost of BJP alone. As far as the opinion polls are concerned, these are also the areas where the emerging picture is not much different from the last time.

I feel that one of the strategies for the Congress should be to emerge the Single Largest party with a comfortable gap. And that can only be attained if Congress could take seats away from BJP from the above mentioned states. In Rajasthan, the Congress has an edge and must repeat and rather improve the recent assembly polls performance. In Gujarat, there is no local leaderership who is even close to Narender Modi. There is a similar crisis in Chhatisgarh. And in Madhya Pradesh it is a problem of plenty.

It is time to think out of the box. Targetting youth in these states could also be another strategy. The party already has prominent youth faces like Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna, MP) and Sachin Pilot (Alwar, Rajasthan) seeking re-election. In addition to this, two young AICC secretaries (believed to be close to Rahul Gandhi) i.e. Jitender Singh (Alwar, Rajasthan) and Meenakshi Natrajan (Mandsaur, MP) have also been fielded. But to create it into a youth movement, a mega campaign is required. If Congress could devote on of its young star campaigners i.e. Rahul or Priyanka Gandhi for these states, I feel things would change dramatically.

The party is deploying much of its resources in States like Uttar Pradesh but the fact remains that it might have been a good decision to contest all 80 seats and strengthen party network, but presently it does not seem to be helping arithmetically.

We should not believe opinion polls but we can always reorient strategies depending upon the indicated trends.