Prashant Kishor, a poll strategist, predicts that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would increase significantly in South and East India, taking over as the main political party in Odisha and gaining major ground in Telangana
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to make significant gains in the East and South, two areas where the saffron party has been finding it difficult to raise its vote total. This prediction comes from poll strategist Prashant Kishor. In Odisha, where Naveen Patnaik’s BJD is the dominating force and has ruled the state for more than 20 years, Kishor thinks the BJP would be the most popular party. With 38.4% of the vote, the saffron party won 8 seats in Odisha, a state with 21 Lok Sabha seats. Conversely, the BJD secured 12 seats with a 42.8 percent vote share. This time, according to the poll strategist, the BJP will win the majority of seats in Odisha.
In Telangana, which is dominated by the Congress, Kishor has similarly projected a sharp increase in the BJP’s vote share and seats. It is significant that the BJP will either be Telangana’s leading party or its second. They would undoubtedly be the best in Odisha, he stated in an interview with the news agency PTI.
With 19.65% of the vote, the saffron party secured 4 seats in the 2019 elections. Nine seats were gained by K Chandrashekar Rao’s BRS, three by the Congress, and one by AIMIM. The BJP saw a 69.22% increase in its vote share to almost 14% in the previous year’s assembly elections. The party gained eight seats, up from one in 2018.
The BRS in Telangana is experiencing a kind of existential crisis as a result of its surprising loss in the Assembly elections and the departure of a few key leaders. Its problems have increased with the arrest of Kavitha, the daughter of former chief minister and party leader K Chandrasekhar Rao. Several senior leaders, including MPs and MLAs, have deserted BRS in favor of the Congress or the BJP.
Among the BRS officials who quit were Rajya Sabha member K Keshav Rao, who served as the party’s face in Delhi; his daughter, Hyderabad Mayor Vijaya Laxmi R Gadwal; former deputy chief minister; and MLAs Kadiam Srihari, Danam Nagender, MPs G Ranjit Reddy and BB Patil.
After Karnataka, Telangana is the only southern state in which the BJP believes it has a chance to win a sizable number of seats. Additionally, the saffron party is working to increase its presence in Tamil Nadu. According to Prashant Kishor’s prediction, the BJP could achieve a double-digit percentage in Tamil Nadu’s vote share.
Although Kishor did not provide a seat total, opinion polls indicate that the BJP will win three to five seats in Tamil Nadu.
In addition to this, the poll strategist predicts that the biggest surprise in West Bengal could come from the saffron party. He predicted that BJP would overtake TMC to become the biggest party in Bengal. The BJP wants to win 35 seats, up from its 2018 total of 18 out of 42 seats.