India Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been saying his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition can sweep three out of every four parliament seats as he crisscrosses the country to charm voters. Analysts and election strategists from his party say the task is not entirely impossible, but is likely to be difficult.
Modi has set his sights on the ruling coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), exceeding 400 out of 543 seats in the lower house of parliament after votes are counted on June 4.
To do that he would have to replicate the NDA’s exceptional showing in northern India in the 2019 election, win more seats in the south — which has so far proved immune to his charm — and wrest power in the west and restive eastern parts of the country.
Illustration: Mountain People
“The NDA won 352 seats last time, and to cross 400 they need 48 seats more,” Pradeep Gupta, chairman of polling firm Axis My India, said before voting began on Friday last week. “Much depends how BJP and NDA performs in states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh in southern India.”
The last time anyone achieved such a crushing win was in 1984, when the Indian National Congress won 404 seats after a sympathy wave swept the country in the aftermath of then-Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
Winning that many seats would give Modi’s alliance a majority of more than two-thirds in the lower house of parliament. The ruling coalition needs two-thirds backing in the upper and lower houses to change the constitution.
Modi is being buoyed by several factors that might help him meet his seat target. India is one of the fastest-growing major economies, a temple where a centuries-old mosque once stood is now open — boosting the BJP’s Hindu nationalist push — and the opposition has been hit by defections and arrests of some of its leaders.
However, that does not mean it is a done deal. Indian voters are fickle and anti-incumbency sentiment runs strong. Several parties remain dominant in their regional strongholds, too.
Here are the opportunities and challenges Modi faces in his quest to meet his lofty goals:
SOUTHERN FORAY
The BJP and its allies can achieve Modi’s target if they can substantially increase their tally in the 130 seats from the southern states, polling company Axis My India has said.
The NDA holds 31 seats in those regions.
“The BJP will have to break ground in southern India,” said Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.
Modi would have to do well in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to achieve 370 to 400 seats overall, he added.
That is easier said than done. The BJP has traditionally had less sway in the south where voters prefer regional parties that promote local languages over Hindi, and where the ruling party’s Hindu nationalism message does not resonate much.
Political leaders there also say they are not getting their fair share of tax revenue from federal coffers.
Modi, who is the face of the BJP campaign and even the star of the party’s manifesto, is making a strong pitch to skeptical voters. He has visited the southern states almost a dozen times in the past six months and even dredged up a decades-old diplomatic issue, blaming the opposition for ceding an island to neighboring Sri Lanka.
MAHARASHTRA BATTLE
The BJP’s alliance with a party in India’s wealthiest state in the west, Maharashtra, delivered 41 of the 48 federal lawmakers to Modi in 2019. It also won a majority in the state assembly.
However, the pact broke down over differences in forming the state government, and in the end, the Shiv Sena cobbled together a coalition with the opposition and other smaller groups.
Yet things have since been looking up for the BJP. In 2022, the Shiv Sena split into two with one faction siding with the BJP, which led to the chief minister’s resignation and a new coalition dominated by the BJP taking over the state government.
An internal BJP survey showed it would gain the parliamentary seats held by the opposition-backed rival Shiv Sena faction, said senior members of the party, who asked not to be named as they are not authorized to speak about electoral strategy.
The BJP would make headway as it has a strong campaign network on the ground, they added.
The BJP did not respond to requests for comment.
EASTERN ADVANCE
The party sees its parliament seat tally rising significantly in the east, particularly in the states of West Bengal and Odisha. Internal assessments show the BJP could bag half of the 42 parliament seats in West Bengal due to negative media coverage about law and order in the state, the party members said.
In 2019, the BJP won 18 seats.
However, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banarjee remains a strong force on the ground. Her party, the All India Trinamool Congress, has been in power in the state since 2011. Despite a strong push by the BJP, she won more seats in the 2021 state elections than in 2016.
In another eastern state, Odisha, the BJP expects to win nearly two-thirds of the 21 seats compared with one-third in 2019, as voters might look for a change from regional party Biju Janata Dal, which has been in power for more than two decades, the BJP members said.
The main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, said it is “confident and upbeat about our prospects,” especially after the first phase of India’s six-week elections that began on Friday last week.
“The BJP will not be anywhere near its target,” Indian National Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said on the telephone.
He added that economic inequality, unemployment and farmer distress — issues his party has been campaigning on — were resonating with voters.
HINDI HEARTLAND
Modi’s coalition would need to maintain its 2019 win rate of 92 percent of the 257 seats from the Hindi-speaking heartland comprising most of central and northern India.
His party expects to do better in Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 lawmakers to parliament — the most in the country, the BJP members said.
It won 64 seats in the last election.
The BJP’s support in state assembly elections has been strong, although that does not mean voters will go the same way in the national polls. The party extended its grip on Uttar Pradesh for a second term in 2022 — the first time any party has done this in four decades.
It went on to retain power in Madhya Pradesh and wrested control of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh assemblies in December last year on the back of Modi’s star power, government handouts and economic growth.
Even so, retaining every seat in the national elections might be difficult.
“Losing some seats cannot be ruled out,” Gupta said. “A decade in power leads to fatigue and anti-incumbency.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hypersonic missile carried a simple message to the West over Ukraine: Back off, and if you do not, Russia reserves the right to hit US and British military facilities. Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik,” or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on Thursday in what Putin said was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with US and British missiles. In a special statement from the Kremlin just after 8pm in Moscow that day, the Russian president said the war was escalating toward a global conflict, although he avoided any nuclear
Would China attack Taiwan during the American lame duck period? For months, there have been worries that Beijing would seek to take advantage of an American president slowed by age and a potentially chaotic transition to make a move on Taiwan. In the wake of an American election that ended without drama, that far-fetched scenario will likely prove purely hypothetical. But there is a crisis brewing elsewhere in Asia — one with which US president-elect Donald Trump may have to deal during his first days in office. Tensions between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea have been at
US President-elect Donald Trump has been declaring his personnel picks for his incoming Cabinet. Many are staunchly opposed to China. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Trump’s nomination to be his next secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, said that since 2000, China has had a long-term plan to destroy the US. US Representative Mike Waltz, nominated by Trump to be national security adviser, has stated that the US is engaged in a cold war with China, and has criticized Canada as being weak on Beijing. Even more vocal and unequivocal than these two Cabinet picks is Trump’s nomination for
An article written by Uber Eats Taiwan general manager Chai Lee (李佳穎) published in the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) on Tuesday said that Uber Eats promises to engage in negotiations to create a “win-win” situation. The article asserted that Uber Eats’ acquisition of Foodpanda would bring about better results for Taiwan. The National Delivery Industrial Union (NDIU), a trade union for food couriers in Taiwan, would like to express its doubts about and dissatisfaction with Lee’s article — if Uber Eats truly has a clear plan, why has this so-called plan not been presented at relevant
RSS