We’re seeking broad, inclusive mandate in Lok Sabha polls: BJP chief JP Nadda

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 7

In a detailed written and in-person interaction with Rajesh Ramachandran, Editor-in-Chief of The Tribune Group of Newspapers, BJP national president JP Nadda insisted that his party wants to make its support broad and inclusive.

“The Prime Minister engages with people from all communities, fostering contributions to the nation’s development, and garnering support across diverse segments. BJP governments being present in six out of eight states in the Northeast, as well as Goa, along with an increased vote share in Kerala, reflects a broad and inclusive mandate,” he said in the context of the PM’s outreach to the Christian community.

While the party will contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls on a plank highlighting PM Modi’s performance — seeking votes for development, security and national prosperity, with pro-poor welfare schemes as the campaign’s cornerstone — the party is open to regional alliances. Nadda left the door ajar for the Shiromani Akali Dal for a tie-up, saying: “It was the Akali Dal that had decided to break the alliance in 2020, not the BJP. Rest, the party will take calls according to future circumstances.”

Nadda countered the Opposition’s — particularly the AAP’s — allegations of the misuse of investigating agencies by pointing out the courts’ refusal to grant bail to AAP leaders arrested in the Delhi liquor scam case. In fact, he made serious allegations of a “drug scam” and a “fake lab test scandal” in AAP’s Mohalla Clinics, claiming that “patients in Mohalla Clinics are being processed within a remarkably brief 36-second window, with alleged fake doctors, patients, medicines, and tests — yet genuine bills.”

While contesting the possibility that the BJP had peaked in 2019, Nadda talked of a poll performance that would go “beyond your assumptions and expectations” in Bihar, Punjab, West Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Nadda believes that the party would secure more seats in South India than it did in the previous elections.

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