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Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor the BJP are invincible and the opposition had three distinct and realistic chances to stop the BJP but lost those ‘because of laziness and misplaced strategies’, eminent political strategist Prashant Kishor opined.
“If you keep dropping catches, the batter will score a century, especially if he is a good batter,” Kishor told news agency PTI.
Pointing at the three different times when the opposition could have stopped the saffron party, he said the BJP had lost several assembly polls except in Assam in 2015 and 2016. But later, it made a stronger comeback.
The party again had a poor run post-demonetisation after its win in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls in 2017 when it almost lost power in Gujarat and was defeated in several states in 2018, but the Congress “blundered” in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Modi suffered from a dip in his approval ratings following the Covid outbreak in 2020 and the BJP lost badly in West Bengal.
Kishor said, “The BJP has been winning because parties like the Congress, Samajwadi Party, RJD, NCP and Trinamool Congress are unable to take it head-on in their own turfs, he said. They have no narrative, face or agenda.”
BJP to win BIG in East and South
Further validating the BJP’s claims that saffron party will add significantly to its seats and vote share in south and east India, Kishor said, “They (BJP) will either be first or second party in Telangana which is a big thing. They will be number one in Odisha for sure. You would be surprised as, in all likelihood, to my mind, the BJP is going to be the number one party in West Bengal.”
In Tamil he said, BJP’s vote share may hit double-digit percentage.
And to get there, Kishor noted, BJP has made a major and visible push to expand in these areas over the years, including top leaders like PM Modi and Amit Shah making frequent visits. On the other hand, the opposition has made little effort in these states.
“Count the number of visits the prime minister had made to Tamil Nadu in the last five years versus Rahul Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi or any other opposition leader for that matter made in battleground states. Your fight is in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh but you are touring Manipur and Meghalaya. Then how you will get success,” he said in an apparent swipe at Rahul Gandhi.
Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Kerala together account for 204 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha but the BJP couldn’t cross 50 seats in all these states put together either in 2014 or 2019 when it won 29 and 47 constituencies respectively.
He, however, asserted that the BJP is unlikely to win 370 seats, its target set for the polls.
(With inputs from PTI)
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Published: 07 Apr 2024, 05:09 PM IST
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