BJP counts losses & gains with slog Lok Sabha poll campaign
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Mission South turbulence forces BJP to intense campaigns on saffron turf
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, May 4: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strategists are turning their razor-eye focus on saffron turf as the Lok Sabha elections enter slog overs this month. The shift in the focus has come amid assessment that the high walls of the southern politics need more time to scale.
The BJP mandarins are learnt to be double-checking on strength of grip of the party in regions which gave scale of victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah along with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath examined the electoral canvas in the Hindi heartland with 80 Lok Sabha seats. Similar efforts are underway in other states.
“The best-case scenario for the BJP in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, as per our assessments, will be three Lok Sabha seats. We will certainly improve the vote shares in the two states,” said a senior BJP functionary.
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Internally, the ‘Mission South’ of the BJP aims for 60 Lok Sabha seats from south of the Vindhyanchal. The alleged sexual exploits of Prajwal Revanna pushed the BJP on defensive in Karnataka.
The BJP had won 25 Lok Sabha seats from Karnataka in 2019. The saffron outfit had also helped one independent candidate win the last elections. The repeat of the score chart of 26/28 Lok Sabha seats from Karnataka in 2019 is now considered within the BJP daunting.
Having run into a resurgent Congress in Karnataka, which forced the saffron outfit to embrace a decaying JD (S), the BJP has to count possible losses as per Bengaluru-based political observers. “The BJP may win four each Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana,” added the BJP functionary.
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The saffron strategists are hoping that possible losses in Karnataka will be negated by gains in other southern states. This scenario may dent Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious task for the BJP to win 370 Lok Sabha seats.
The BJP strategists are claiming that the party is slated to make gains in Odisha (8+5=13), West Bengal (18+6=24), and Assam (9+3=12). They are counting minor losses in states such as Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra.
Overall, they argue that the BJP may end with a net gain of 15 Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The caveat here is that the party leaders invariably spotlight best-case scenarios in elections. The flurry of meetings amid reports of lower urban voting percentages in the BJP’s traditional electoral turf suggests challenges on hand.
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