“I will be back next year to address you from the Red Fort” — there couldn’t have been a more confident statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi about his party’s prospects for 2024, that too from the ramparts of the Red Fort. There are strong reasons behind Modi’s confidence.
One, the prime minister strongly feels that he has run a corruption-free regime for the last nine years and people will reward him for the same when they cast their ballot in the general elections last year.
Second, Modi feels he has always acted in national interest, to make the country stronger and his actions have been in the favour of India. Modi’s campaign for the general elections could revolve around these themes — that if the people feel he has delivered on the ‘na khaunga, na khane dunga’ promise, and if has always put the country first in his actions — let people give him another term.
The underlying peoples’ sentiment that the prime minister is also appealing to is the hope yet again for a stable and full-majority government, and not a ‘khichdi sarkar’ like the one promised by the INDIA alliance. A senior cabinet minister told News18 that the PM is of the firm belief that the country has moved on from electing unstable coalition governments or political dynasts and people want the winning party to get a clear majority so that big reforms are carried out. While the UPA under Sonia Gandhi could make a rainbow coalition win in 2004, the times have changed and Rahul Gandhi won’t be able to repeat his mother’s feat in 2024, the senior cabinet minister argued.
Another senior minister told News18 that the BJP is looking at an excellent result in 2024 in three big states — Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar, which alone send 168 MPs to the Lok Sabha.
“Uttar Pradesh could be a big sweep like 2014 — there is no alliance this time unlike 2019 between SP and BSP. Yogi Adityanath is in a strong position as CM and the Ayodhya Ram Temple inauguration and Gyanvapi matter will help the BJP. Akhilesh Yadav’s situation and image is like that of Rahul Gandhi. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar has lost all credibility. In Maharashtra, we have aligned forces with new factions of Shiv Sena and NCP which will help us win big,” the senior minister said.
The Congress decided to give the Independence Day function a miss where ample hints were thrown by Modi on how he plans to approach the 2024 elections. The speech was in fact ‘vintage Modi’ style. His attack on the three ills plaguing the country — corruption, appeasement and dynasty politics — was a direct comment on the Congress party and how it has been rejected by the electorate both in 2014 and 2019.
Modi also spoke from Red Fort about how his government has stopped serial bomb blasts and terror attacks that rocked the UPA era, and hence has made the country and its borders much more secure. This forms a potent cocktail of assurances and a super-confident Modi that the Congress is up against in less than a year.
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