Bihar ‘settled’, BJP zeroes in on key swing states Maharashtra, Karnataka, Bengal for LS polls

As BJP leaders from across India prepare to gather next month to receive the final blueprint for the party’s Lok Sabha election strategy, the party is confident that the nation’s mood is in its favour.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has solidified his power position by convincing the electorate that he is the only champion of development and Hindutva — especially after the consecration of Ram Temple in Ayodhya — and is the reason for India’s heightened position in the global order. Modi has channelled that sentiment into strengthening his bond with the electorate.

But the BJP’s top leaders remember the lessons from the party’s defeat in 2004 — it lost despite few expecting it to — to not take the overall atmosphere for granted as the basis for its poll calculations. They have analysed the political situation in each state and weighed the party’s prospects beyond the outer layer. Many in the party often cite the party’s reliance on the goodwill factor and not going deep into the state combinations as the reasons for the failure of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government to return to power in 2004 despite the “positive atmosphere in favour of the BJP and NDA (National Democratic Alliance)”. A BJP leader said, “The current leadership does not want to repeat that mistake and does not want to take any chance.”

While the political developments in Patna last week hinted at the BJP’s approach to key states, party leaders said politics in other swing states such as Maharashtra and Karnataka could witness “stunning instances”. They said that electoral outcomes in Bihar, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and West Bengal were crucial and that the leadership was focussing on these states to ensure that the NDA gets as close to the tally of 400