How Modi’s BJP plans to win a supermajority in India’s election By Reuters

Written by Rupam Jain and Tora Agarwala

BARPETA/THIRUVANANTHPURAM, India (Reuters) – As voting begins in India's six-week general election, Narendra Modi's image adorns everything from rice packets distributed to the poor to large posters in cities and towns.

His Bharatiya Janata Party is counting on the Prime Minister's popularity as it seeks to obtain an overwhelming majority in the Indian Parliament. Its message is that Modi has succeeded in achieving economic growth, modernizing infrastructure, and improving India's standing in the world.

But while the Hindu nationalist party and its allies are targeting 400 of the 543 seats in the lower house of India's parliament – up from 352 in 2019 – they are also using homegrown tactics in some vital constituencies they hope to wrest from the opposition.

Opinion polls indicate that Modi will win a rare third term when voting ends on June 1. But only once in Indian history has a party exceeded the 400-seat barrier, when the center-left Congress Party won after the assassination of its leader Indira Gandhi in 2011. 1984.

To examine how the right-wing National Democratic Alliance aims to achieve this feat – and the obstacles it faces – Reuters spoke to nine National Democratic Alliance officials, three opposition leaders and two political analysts, as well as voters in six opposition-controlled seats. The coalition is targeting.

They identified three of the BJP's main tactics: recruiting celebrity candidates to unseat veteran opposition legislators; attacking southern opposition strongholds by appealing to minorities such as Christians; And exploiting the redrawing of political boundaries that strengthens Hindu voters in some opposition-controlled areas in the north.

“A combination of strategies, organizational commitment and tactical flexibility will help make inroads in seats that the party has never held before,” BJP president JP Nadda, who is overseeing the party's election strategy, told Reuters in April.

Some critics have warned that the BJP will use its large majority to advance a more extreme agenda in a third term. While the BJP's manifesto focuses largely on economic growth, it has also pledged to abolish separate laws for religious and tribal groups in areas such as marriage and inheritance.

Many Muslims and tribal groups oppose the plan, which requires at least two-thirds of parliament members to approve a constitutional amendment.

“Modi wants an overwhelming majority just to be able to end discussion and deliberations on any political issue in Parliament,” Congress party leader Mallikarjun Kharge told Reuters.

After a drop in turnout in early voting, some BJP campaign officials in recent days appeared less confident of securing a large majority, although the party still expects to form the next government.

Southern strategy

Modi's party has criticized dynastic policies that it says afflict the Congress party, which has long been dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi family. But in Pathanamthitta, a seat in the southern state of Kerala, it is fielding a political scion, Anil Antony, the son of a veteran Congress leader.

This district, which includes a large Christian minority, has been controlled by Congress since its creation in 2009.

Anil's father, former Defense Minister AK Antony, supports the incumbent and has condemned his son, a fellow Christian, for representing the Hindu nationalist party.

But Anil has another supporter: Modi, who came to Pathanamthitta in March and praised the BJP candidate for his “new vision and leadership.” The Prime Minister has visited the five states of southern India at least 16 times since December.

Nadda, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, admitted that winning an overwhelming majority would require a good performance in the five southern states, which contain about 20% of India's population but have not traditionally voted for his party.

In 2019, the NDA won just 31 of the 130 seats in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, all of which are linguistically diverse and have many Muslim and Christian voters.

Jiji Joseph, general secretary of the BJP's minority wing in Kerala, said the party had made a concerted effort to attract the 18% of voters there who are Christians. The BJP did not win a single seat in Kerala in the last general elections.

“The BJP has initiated active communication with the church and we have started interacting with the clergy directly,” he said, adding that the party now has 11,000 active Christian members. “There is a change. Christians now want to believe that the BJP represents them.”

In April, Anil became the first BJP candidate in Kerala to be endorsed by Christian leaders. He told Reuters that his selection indicates that the party provides opportunities for members of minorities. He refused to comment on relations with his father.

Jayant Joseph, a Christian voter from Kerala, said he supported the BJP because he had read media reports about Muslim men marrying Christian women and converting them to Islam. Most moderate Hindus consider allegations of widespread forced conversion to be a conspiracy theory.

“Kerala is a secular state,” he said. “But to remain a secular state, the Muslim population and their transformation strategy must be kept in check.”

A political aide to Modi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the NDA expected to win about 50 seats in the south.

K Anil Kumar, a senior leader of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala, said he did not think the BJP would do well in his state, which he said had a strong secular tradition.

“The BJP may try to side with Christians on some issues, but it is essentially a party of Hindus and for Hindus,” he added.

Star candidates

In Mandi constituency in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, the BJP has recruited Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut to break the Congress Party's grip on power. The Congress is fielding its candidate Vikramaditya Singh, whose mother currently represents the constituency. His father was the chief minister of the state for a long time.

Ranaut, a political novice who describes herself as a “glorious right-wing” figure, has starred in popular films with nationalist themes. She is known for her criticism of Bollywood executives who she said favor relatives of famous actors for opportunities.

The actress is one of five actors running for the BJP this year, up from four in 2019.

There is no poll on Mandy's race available to the public.

Anjana Negia, a primary school teacher who plans to vote for Ranaut, admitted that her preferred candidate has no political experience. But she said she appreciated the new face and that the Modi-backed candidate would help “bring a new wave of development”.

Milan Vaishnav, an expert on South Asian politics at the Carnegie Endowment for Research, said involving celebrities and seeking the endorsement of entertainment figures is relatively new for the BJP, which has “resisted such tactics for a long time because of its cadre-based nature” that values ​​grassroots efforts. . An international peace think tank.

Ranaut declined an interview request. She “successfully exposed the culture of dynasticism and nepotism in Bollywood, and now she is doing the same in politics,” said Shahzad Poonawalla, spokesperson for the federal Bharatiya Janata Party.

Singh, the minister of state responsible for urban development, told Reuters that his family's experiences had given him a better understanding of politics. He said accusations of nepotism were “superficial.”

Redistribution of benefits

The NDA is hoping to make gains in the northeastern state of Assam, where it won nine of 14 seats in 2019. Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam's chief minister, said in March that he was confident of winning 13 seats.

The NDA's confidence goes back to the state's 2023 redistricting process. The non-partisan Election Commission of India routinely redraws seat boundaries to reflect population changes. It is charged with ensuring that no political party gains an undue advantage from the changes.

But exercises since the last federal election in Assam and far northern Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority region, have diluted the Muslim vote in seats targeted by the NDA, according to three BJP and four opposition officials.

The Election Commission refused to comment on the maneuvers, citing the ongoing elections.

In Assam, the NDA has high hopes for Congress-controlled Barpeta, which alliance candidate Vani Bhushan Chaudhary said includes dozens of villages and some towns with large Hindu populations.

“Previously, Barpeta had a Muslim majority, but now it is a Hindu majority,” Chaudhary said. “This change has worked to my advantage.”

He estimates there are now 1.2 million Hindu voters in Barpeta, where he campaigns for the development and protection of the rights of what the NDA calls “indigenous Assamese” voters, most of whom are Hindu.

Deb Bayan, Choudhary's opponent in Congress, said the percentage of Hindus in Barpeta had risen from 30% to 70%. “Instead of focusing on the real issues that affect people… (the BJP is practicing) polarizing politics,” he said.

Three of Jammu and Kashmir's five seats are Muslim-majority and held by the opposition. But the NDA is hoping to change one of them, Anantnag Rajouri, after voter lists swelled by more than 50% to more than two million people, according to government data.

Many of the new voters are Hindus or from regional tribes – which have benefited from new BJP policies that gave them education and employment privileges – according to regional BJP president Ravinder Raina.

Raina said the BJP will support the NDA partner it believes can win Anantnag Rajouri and will focus on retaining the two seats held by the Hindu majority.

The two redistricting operations herald a broader redrawing of electoral districts scheduled to take place after the election.

Vaishnav, of the Carnegie Endowment, said redrawing the maps would distribute seats to the BJP-dominated north, which has much higher population growth rates, at the expense of India's wealthier south.