Road to 2024: BJP’s target not just 370 seats, it is also seeking to touch 50% votes

As the general elections draw near, the BJP government has upped the ante, underlining its confidence by declaring a seat target that is 67 more than the number of constituencies it won last time, and already talking of plans for its third term in power.

IfPrime Minister Narendra Modi has a 370-seat goal for the BJP and 400-plus for the NDA, he has also asked his Cabinet members to reportedly be ready with a 100-day plan to roll out for their current ministries in the next government.

At the same time, the BJP is aggressively pursuing both new alliances as well as leaders to woo over to its side from other parties – both big and small. Party leaders said that deals with the TDP-JanaSena Party in Andhra Pradesh and Rashtriya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh have been almost sealed, while back-channel talks were still on with the Akali Dal despite the setback due to the farmer protests.

The string of Bharat Ratnas, for former prime ministers P V Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh, as well as M S Swaminathan and Karpoori Thakur, in an election year, were also seen as aimed at specific political messages.

While the BJP’s rivals insist these show the party’s “desperation” to scramble numbers, leaders say there is a method to this step-by-step collation – to not just win a comprehensive majority but also come close to 50% in terms of vote share. Incidentally, the Opposition’s INDIA bloc often falls back on the fact that 64%-odd voters did not vote for the BJP in 2019, to justify its formation.

In fact, the BJP government has a specific figure that it hopes to surpass: the 46.86% votes the Congress got when it won 414 seats in the post-Indira Gandhi assassination election of 1984 (which remains the largest number of seats won by a