In Tamil Nadu, he said, BJP’s vote share may hit double-digit percentage.Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, political strategist Prashant Kishor on Sunday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will add significantly to its seats and vote share in South and East India, and may win 300-plus seats – well above the magic number to form the government in the Centre.
Kishor, who has worked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and many opposition leaders like Mamata Banerjee in Bengal and Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh, said the BJP may emerge as the number one party in West Bengal, and will either be the first or second party in Telangana.
“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,” he said in an interaction with news agency PTI.
Kishor said the opposition had three distinct and realistic chances of stopping the BJP juggernaut but frittered away the opportunities because of laziness and misplaced strategies.
In Tamil Nadu, he said, BJP’s vote share may hit double-digit percentage. In 2019, the saffron party got 3.66 per cent votes but no seat. This time, some opinion polls have predicted 3-5 seats for the BJP.
Similarly in Odisha, the BJP had bagged 8 of 21 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. This time, this number can go up to 10. In Telangana, which has 17 seats, the BJP had won 4 seats.
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. BJP won 29 seats in 2014 and 47 in 2019 in these states.
However, this time, Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have made a major push to expand its reach in the south and east to increase the party’s tally.
Referring to visits by the top BJP leaders to the South, Kishor said: “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.”
When asked about his take on Rahul Gandhi’s reported reluctance to contest from Amethi, the political strategist said the opposition party cannot win the country by winning Kerala alone. “If you do not win in UP, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh, there is no benefit if you win from Wayanad. Strategically, I can say that letting that space (Amethi) go will only send a wrong message.”
Kishor said that Modi had chosen to contest from Uttar Pradesh in addition to his home state Gujarat in 2014 “because you cannot win India unless you win the Hindi heartland or have a significant presence in the Hindi heartland.” He, however, said that the BJP is unlikely to win 370 seats, a target that Prime Minister Modi has set for the party.
