Get me an enemy of my stature

Gyanesh Kumar and co seem to be fans of Agatha Christie. Their Election Commission might be in an SIR soup, but her grey-celled sleuth would have marvelled at the neat alphabetic order in which they have arranged the current round of polls.

- By R. PRASANNAN

Polling in Assam, Kerala and Puducherry are being completed first, Tamil Nadu will be next, and West Bengal last. C'est bien, as Hercule Poirot would have exclaimed.

The alphabetic arrangement makes political sense too. Electoral politics in the latter two states is different from the other three. The contests in Assam, Kerala and Puducherry are between local rulers and their local opposition. Himanta Sarma of the BJP is fighting Gaurav Gogoi's Congress in Assam; Pinarayi Vijayan of the communist-led front is fending off V.D. Satheesan and others of the Congress-led front in Kerala; and N. Rangaswamy's AINR Congress's pact with the BJP is pitted against the V. Vaithilingam-led Congress's partnership with the DMK in Puducherry. The protagonists and the antagonists are all very local; the issues they deal with and duel over are also verily local.