Inside Modi and BJP’s plan to win a supermajority
As India votes in a sixweek general election, Narendra Modi’s image adorns everything from packs of rice handed out to the poor to large posters in cities and towns.
His BJP is relying on the prime minister’s popularity as it seeks a supermajority in India’s parliament. Its message: Modi has delivered economic growth, infrastructure upgrades and India’s improved standing in the world.
But as the Hindu nationalist party and its allies target 400 of the 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament - up from 352 won in 2019 - they are also employing local tactics in some vital constituencies they hope to wrest from the opposition.
Opinion polls indicate Modi will win a rare third term when voting ends on June 1. But only once in Indian history has a party crossed the 400 mark - when the centre-left Congress party romped to victory following the assassination of its leader Indira Gandhi in 1984.
To examine how the right-wing National Democratic Alliance (NDA) aims to achieve that feat and the obstacles it faces Reuters spoke to nine NDA officials, three opposition leaders and two political analysts, as well as voters in six opposition-held seats the alliance is targeting.
They identified three of the BJP’s key tactics: enlisting celebrity candidates to unseat veteran opposition lawmakers; making an assault on the opposition’s southern strongholds by appealing to minorities such as Christians; and exploiting redrawn political boundaries that bolster the Hindu electorate in some opposition-controlled areas in the north.