Patna: The Bharatiya Janata Party has added to its list of “difficult-to-win” seats for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections — taking the number from 144 to 160 — with an eye on the charged political scenario in Bihar and Maharashtra, ThePrint has learnt.
While in Bihar, the party lost its ally, the Nitish Kumar led Janata Dal (United) earlier this year, it is likely to face a tough fight in Maharashtra from the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) — an alliance of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Congress and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray).
In the 2019 elections, the BJP and the JD(U) had contested 17 Lok Sabha (LS) seats each. The BJP won all its seats, while the JD(U) lost only one. Of the 40 LS seats in the state, the BJP’s other ally, the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), won six. The Congress had won just one.
The BJP’s earlier list of 144 difficult-to-win seats included four from Bihar — Nawada, Vaishali, Valmiki Nagar, and Kishanganj, according to sources in the party.
With Nitish Kumar breaking away from the NDA alliance, the BJP will now have to contest from more constituencies, after allocating seats to the LJP and other smaller allies. The party has hence added six more seats to the list. All these seats — Jhanjharpur, Supaul, Gaya, Purnea, Katihar and Munger — are currently held by the JD(U).
In Maharashtra, where the MVA government under former CM Uddhav Thackeray collapsed after then Shiv Sena MLA and current CM Eknath Shinde led a rebellion of Sena MLAs against the alliance, the BJP is now in power in partnership with the Shinde-led Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena.
But with the MVA standing firmly against the new government, the BJP has added ten more seats, to its ‘difficult’ seats list in the state. These seats, such as Baramati, Chandrapur, Shirpur and Satara, among others, are currently held by the NCP, the Congress, the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of the Shiv Sena or independent MLAs.
The party’s “difficult-to-win” seats list already included some from across states like Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab.
Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Bansal, who is also in charge of such seats in UP, told ThePrint, “The second phase of the party’s Pravas campaign is on, under which a Union minister is in charge of a bunch of Lok Sabha seats. Committees of five-seven members have to be constituted for every assembly segment of each Lok Sabha seat which will oversee the entire poll preparation.”
The party is also holding two-day Vistarak training programmes for these seats, said sources. A session in Bihar began Wednesday. Another such session will be held in Hyderabad beginning 28 December, with an eye on next year’s Telangana assembly elections, where the BJP wants to unseat the incumbent Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now renamed the Bharat Rashtra Samithi) party.
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‘Dynamic, evolving situation’
Sources in the BJP told ThePrint that the revaluation of seats was necessitated by the changed political scenario in Bihar and Maharashtra.
“When we initially shortlisted weak seats in different states, the situation was different. We had an alliance with Nitish Kumar (in Bihar) and the MVA was ruling (in Maharashtra). But now, we have to deploy more resources on the seats held by our opponents in both the states,” said a senior BJP leader, who has been deputed by the party to focus on these seats.
The leader added: “It’s a dynamic, evolving situation where we take decisions based on the changing political situation. Tomorrow, we may add more resources on more seats if we find that further push is needed there.”
The focus on Bihar and Maharashtra is also because in both states the party is facing strong rivals, said another senior BJP leader.
“In Bihar, the JD(U)-RJD caste calculation (to tap into caste votebanks) may be on-point, but these numbers don’t work in Lok Sabha elections. Our alliance with the erstwhile Shiv Sena (before the MVA) was a tested one in Maharashtra. However, with Shinde, we haven’t taken the electoral test yet. Hence, we have to focus on the seats held by the MVA.”
While the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance had won 41 seats in Maharashtra in 2019 (BJP: 23, Shiv Sena: 18), a BJP MP from Maharashtra told ThePrint, “for 2024, even if we are sure to win our share of seats, we cannot be too sure about the Shinde quota, and we need to keep our tally intact”.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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