While Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is seeking a third term, a fractured Opposition under the INDIA bloc seeks to stop that. While Congress is just one of more than two dozen constituent parties of the coalition, the fact remains that it is the principal rival of the BJP and it is reflected in how the two parties are taking on each other ahead of the announcement of the polls. The BJP and Congress are increasingly clashing with each other in states and are poaching leaders and announcing schemes to woo the public.

While Congress is campaigning on the plank of caste census and hiking other backward classes (OBC) reservation and sops like Rs 1 lakh to every 'poor' woman and legally-guaranteed minimum support price (MSP) on crops to farmers, the BJP is counting on 10 years of social engineering, ideological successes like the abrogation of Article 370, recent assembly election victories, the Ram Mandir consecration, and implicit promises like the further fulfilment of ideological objectives like the uniform civil code (UCC) in its third term.

The Opposition has continued to accuse the BJP of using investigative agencies and political machinations to break the governments in Opposition-ruled states. While such allegations had earlier been made in states like Jharkhand or Rajasthan, the case of Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh is the latest.

In Himachal, the discord in the Congress party's ranks came out in open in the last month's Rajya Sabha elections. As things stood, with 40 of 68 MLAs, the Congress was assured to win the state's only Rajya Sabha seat going to the polls. In a development that stunned the party and left Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu red-faced, six Congress MLAs joined three Independent MLAs to cross-vote in favour of the BJP's candidate Harsh Mahajan to make him victorious. A short-lived rebellion by Vikramaditya Singh, the son of late Congress stalwart Virbhadra Singh, followed. While the situation has been contained, 'resort politics' is in motion and the long-term continuity of the Sukhu ministry is not guaranteed.

Elsewhere, in recent weeks, Congress leaders like Milind Deora have joined the BJP and resignations have also hit party's Assam unit where Working President Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha resigned while "extending support" to the state's BJP's Himanta Biswa Sarma-led government. Other top state-based leaders have also resigned from the party.

For the BJP, Haryana this week witnessed a change of guard, which has been seen as a last-ditch course-correction by the saffron party in the state. Manohar Lal Khattar resigned as the CM of Haryana and was replaced by Nayab Singh Saini, a Member of Parliament. The coalition of the BJP with the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) also fell apart ahead of the polls over disagreements on seat-sharing. While, prima facie, the move appeared to be linked to the parliamentary elections, observers have said it is linked to containing anti-incumbency against Khattar ahead of the assembly elections later this year.

"Sources in the BJP said that the party got feedback of some anti-incumbency against CM Khattar and the leadership decided that a change of guard needed to be done well before the state elections. The party high command was clear that Khattar couldn't be its candidate in the Assembly elections later this year," reported The Quint. In the second list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP named Khattar as the party's candidate from Haryana's Karnal seat.

In the run-up to the 2024 general elections, Khattar is the third chief minister to be replaced. Earlier, Bhajanlal Sharma was brought in Rajasthan in place of frontrunner Vasundhara Raje and longtime Madhya Pradesh leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan was replaced by Mohan Yadav. Earlier in Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma had replaced the previous CM Sarbananda Sonowal.

In Haryana, the BJP's state unit was also jolted by the exit of Hisar MP Brijendra Singh, who later joined Congress. In Karnataka, former BJP leader K Jayaprakash Hegde and two former BJP MLAs also joined Congress this week.

As far as the alliances are concerned, the BJP has also poached Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and Janata Dal-United (JD-U) from the INDIA bloc to boost its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ahead of the polls. As for the INDIA bloc, the fractures are visible in the party as the constituent parties are clashing in Bihar and there is friction in seat-sharing in other states as well.

Ahead of the polls, as two principal rival political parties poach each-others' members and allies and do final course-corrections and make promises, we look at the upcoming elections and how such machinations are playing out.