BJP’s boom year?

Aditi Tandon

“THE best is yet to come” is a common refrain in the BJP circles these days as the ruling dispensation braces for 2024, a year it believes will be historic. In this year of the 18th General Election, saffron forces will eye three milestones as they take on the Opposition INDIA bloc.

The first is ensuring Narendra Modi equals late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s record of winning three consecutive Lok Sabha elections with a majority. The second is crossing the 400 Lok Sabha seat mark to match the late Rajiv Gandhi’s record of bagging the highest ever seats, 414, in 1984.

The third is mustering 50 per cent of the votes cast, a feat no party has achieved so far. Even the Congress at its electoral peak in 1984 got 48.1 per cent of the votes cast.

Already in pole position after sweeping the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the BJP is confident that 2024 will be its boom year, with PM Modi asking cadres to work in mission mode for increasing BJP’s vote share in 2024 by over 10 per cent and script history.

The saffron signal of battle-readiness comes when the anti-BJP INDIA bloc is struggling to find an acceptable leader, forge meaningful ideological and electoral unity and craft impactful poll narratives.

In the face of a fragmented Opposition, the BJP plans to intensify its anti-INDIA bloc pitch on corruption, nepotism and appeasement. This, as it blends strategies of Hindutva, social-geographical expansion, focused engagement of women, farmers, poor and youth and an outreach to Central scheme beneficiaries to win the day.

Party strategists recall poll data to justify their confidence.

Since 1984, when it won two Lok Sabha seats, to 2019, when it bagged 303 of the 435 seats contested, the BJP’s rise has been consistent. After 1989 (BJP had won 85 seats), the party has never fallen below the 100-seat mark in the Lok Sabha unlike Congress, which dropped to 44 in 2014 and 52 in 2019.

Between Modi’s two terms as PM (2014 and 2019), the BJP’s vote share rose from 31 to 37.36 per cent with a 45 per cent combined NDA share in 2019, as against Congress’ 19.49 per cent and UPA’s 26.74.

Equally, between the 2014 and 2019 polls, the BJP expanded across geographies and social groups, gained at the expense of regional parties (Others won 188 seats in 2019, the lowest since 1991 when they took 170 seats); trumped Congress in 80 per cent direct fights; increased its presence among OBCs, SCs, STs and rural voters (traditional Congress supporters) and bagged the majority of first-time and women’s votes.

Besides, the BJP won over 50 per cent votes in 224 of its 303 LS seats in 2019. In 11 states, its performance improved over 2014 and in nine — Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Rajasthan, MP, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh — it took over 50 per cent votes.

The party’s plan of focusing on hitherto electorally barren belts also paid dividends in 2019 when in West Bengal, the BJP won 18 LS seats against two in 2014, with the corresponding rise in Odisha being one seat (2014) to eight (2019), Telangana one to four and Tripura zero to two.

That said, BJP’s top challenge in 2024 will again come from the South, West Bengal and Odisha, where regional satraps, DMK’s MK Stalin, TMC’s Mamata Banerjee and BJD’s Naveen Patnaik, are holding strong.

Out of 128 parliamentary segments in Tamil Nadu (39), Andhra Pradesh (25), Kerala (19), Karnataka (28) and Telangana (17), the BJP has only 29 MPs with no presence in Kerala, AP or Tamil Nadu. This explains PM Modi’s consistent Tamil push and his engagement with Christians and Pasmandas, backward Muslims who form nearly 85 per cent of the community’s population.

Strategies apart, BJP leaders acknowledge the southern roadblock to the dream poll run, with conversion of rising vote shares into seats a big challenge.

“Consolidation of existing strongholds and continued outreach in the south and east remain at the core of the 2024 strategy, while work on 160 weak seats which we lost in 2019 is ongoing,” saffron strategists say. In their calculation, if beneficiaries of government schemes alone vote for the BJP (just one free ration scheme covers over 80 crore poor), its vote share will cross 50 per cent.

Insiders also point to nearly 260 “comfortable” seats, that include 95 the BJP has won in the past three Lok Sabha elections.

With narratives in place and the PM unveiling the 2024 catchphrase, ‘Modi ki guarantee’, the BJP is already in poll mode to gain early advantage. The Congress, too, has declared its manifesto panel in a rare display of combat-readiness.

As rivals clash, election management is where the BJP believes it will score. The party has introduced a cluster concept with four to five LS seats combined into one cluster under a leader who will be tasked with booth management in the area.

To draft its manifesto, the party has micro-sheets analysing trends and aspirations across age and voting segments ready, while the government’s ‘Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra’ will reach beneficiaries in 2.6 lakh panchayats and over 4,000 urban local bodies by January 25.

Finally, the upcoming Ram Mandir consecration in Ayodhya is being woven into BJP’s election plank that blends Hindutva with welfare. The VHP and BJP plan to reach 15 crore families across India with invitations to visit Ayodhya as the ruling party works to convert Modi’s remarks — “A hattrick in the Hindi heartland is a guarantee of a hattrick in 2024” — into reality.

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