Is good governance a good poll plank? Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah thinks otherwise. Abdullah recently stated that though service delivery is the sole performance indicator of a government, a good track record with it may not always translate into votes for incumbent governments. He believes that in India, a host of other factors are at play during elections and votes often hinge on religion, region, caste, etc. It could be so with many parties nurturing votebanks. Caste (BSP's rise in Uttar Pradesh, DMK in Tamil Nadu), religion (BJP's Hindu votebank, Congress and SP's Muslim votebank), community (Lingayat in Karnataka, Leuva Patel in Gujarat) often do sway voters one or the other way.

However, the ruling parties in states like Gujarat, Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh say that it was the good governance won them consecutive terms at the helm. In fact, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has held for long that his victory in the 2010 state polls wasbecause voters vindicated the good governance his government offered in its first term.

So, is it possible for a party/combine to pool votes riding the good governance poll plank?