As Assembly Elections to the five states –Goa, Punjab, Manipur, UP, and Uttarakhand- are scheduled by February-March this year and the ruling BJP at the centre, is pulling out all stops to ensure it retains not only UP, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur but also wrests Punjab from an imploding Congress. Pulling out all stops means that the BJP is using everything within its power- the party organisation’s awesome cash resources, announcing mega projects in the poll bound states with more emphasis on BJP-ruled states and ED and CBI raids on opposition leaders or their financial backers. Leading the BJP charge are two of the BJP’s proven election warhorses- prime minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah. For the BJP, UP is a crucial test of how the voters of UP, who return 80 Lok Sabha MPs, will likely vote in 2024. The state has 403 assembly constituencies of which the BJP won an absolute and brute majority of 318 seat in 2017. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 62 seats some ten seats less than the 71 it won in 2014. Nevertheless, UP continues to be the big state that BJP banks on. UP is a vast and sprawling land of 24 crore people, which is being managed by Modi’s handpicked chief minister Yogi Adityanath. Elections to the Assembly are slated for around end-February. Notification by the Election Commission will be issued probably in the first week of January. It could also be delayed to give the BJP some more time to push through more mega projects in states wherever it is needed. Modi who adopted Varanasi as his home constituency in the 2014 Lok Sabha election (contested both Vadadora and Varanasi and won both), has been on election-mode since 2020 and became more intense in 2021. So far till December 2021, Modi has announced some Rs.1,01,695 crore worth of projects ranging from world class international airports at Kushinagar estimated at Rs.260 crore, Jewar,Noida estimated at Rs.10,500 crore; the Purvanchal Expressway-Lucknow to Ghazipur estimated at over 22,000 crore and Ganga Expressway-Meerut to Prayagraj(Allahabad) worth 36,230 crore etc to name a few of the so many mega projects inaugurated with much fanfare. Out of the Rs.1,01,695 crore for UP, about Rs. 70,000 crore are for expressways and airports. Mega projects have also been announced for Uttarakhand estimated at over Rs.18,000 crore; mega projects estimated at Rs.42,000 crore for Punjab; projects estimated at over Rs.4000 crore for Manipur, projects estimated nearly Rs.700 crore for Goa. The mega projects are one part and the other is blatant religious display where prime minister Narendra Modi performed Shivarchan in the sanctum sanctorum of Kashi Vishwanath Temple to mark the opening of the Rs 900 crore Kashi Vishwanath Dham project in the presence of 3,000 religious and spiritual gurus, priests of southern Shaivism sects and other dignitaries at Mandir Chowk. The very basis of respect to all religions that Hinduism is known for, vaporises with verbal attacks on religious minorities and political opponents. In addition the ruling party is using the central probe agencies to harass and threaten political opponents. Even if the ECI finally decides to announce elections and set in place the Model Code of Conduct, the damage done to democracy has already been done. The only faint hope are the voters –whether they will use the greatest power in their hands, literally.