Nothing But The Truth With Raj Chengappa: Can India Defeat Modi? | Lok Sabha Election 2024

nothing but the truth opposition is facing what is called an existentialist threat it is also pushing for a massive 400 seats or as they say in Hindi Chara par the Congress needs to push that tally down if it is able to push the BJP down to 250 then even though they may not have defeated the BJP it would have severely dented prime minister modi's dominance and credibility can the India block topple prime minister Narendra Modi in the upcoming general election hello I'm Raj Chen up of India today and that's the big question we will be answering in this episode of nothing but the [Music] truth we will analyze the opposition game plan to defeat the ruling bar J party or BJP and do it by focusing on their four major strategies and saying and seeing whether these could work or they could fall by the wayside but upfront let's be clear that the opposition is facing what is called an existentialist threat especially if the BJP succeeds in its plan of winning a brute majority of 370 seats by itself it is also pushing for a massive 400 seats or as they say in Hindi Chara par with its allies in the National Democratic Alliance or the NDA the BJP has humiliated the opposition parties twice in the past as we know winning back-to-back majorities in the 543 member Loa on its own it won 282 seats in 214 and 303 in 2019 and along with its allies in the NDA the tally was as much as 352 in the last general election so election 20 24 has in fact now become a true test of political relevance for the opposition that's why they demonstrated a massive show of strength in the capital soon after the arrest of Delhi chief minister and am ADI supro Arvin kial uh which was uh uh conducted by the enforcement director recently for his alleged involvement in the deli liquor scan on March 31st leaders representing the 27 parties that constitute what is called the Indian national development and inclusive Alliance or India for short uh they came together on a single platform to condemn not just K kajal's arrest but that of H Surin also who resigned if you recall as jarin chief minister this January this was after the Ed took hon Surin into custody for an alleged land scam meanwhile the Congress the largest party in the opposition received a series of notices from the income tax or it Department over alleged tax violations the IT department demanded that the party has to pay a staggering uh fine of rupes 3,500 CR the Congress appealed to the Supreme Court charging that the IT department uh of a malfi action uh to choke its funds the party's funds during this crucial election campaign that in fact forced the it officials to back off and assure the Supreme Court that they will desis from taking any Co of action against the party till the election period is over now the opposition parties accus the BJP of poaching their leaders and their uh and splitting their parties to gain or retain power in various States they charge the BJP with using Central investigation agencies like the enforcement directorate the CBI and also the income tax department to cause them uh to uh and their leaders to defect and join the BJP they see all these developments as a Sinister plan by the BJP to inhalte uh the opposition altogether and uh the plan they believe is for the BJP to make radical changes in the Constitution that would imp impact individual freedoms and that is why they're seeking a brute majority of 370 seats now when my colleague Kosik DEA and I interviewed Congress president and IND India convenor Malik Arjun kge uh and this was recently he told us and I'm quoting him such is the capture of the Constitutional institutions by the BJP that they there is an Undeclared emergency in the country Prime Minister Modi has become an autocrat close quotes he called it an Undeclared emergency of course the BJP will hotly refute such a serious charge but the opposition uh combine is acutely aware that the BJP has a Relentless election missionary powered by prime minister modi's personal popularity and his perceived performance record along with these factors is the party's Hindu uh nationalist IDE ideological agenda and its development plank that is going to be tough for the opposition to beat it but in all this Doom and Gloom for the opposition it has one consolation and that is the vote share percentage the fact is that the bjp's vote share in 2019 was around 37% in the loah elections and the nda's 45% that meant that as much as or as many as 55% of the electorate had voted parties opposing the BJP LED ones that statistic demanded that the opposition parties combine their forces and halt the BJP Juggernaut as they did under the India Banner which they formed just in July last year but the BJP struck right back by winning uh back to its fold a Bihar chief minister and a jadal United Chief uh uh nitish Kumar who in many senses was the the chief pivot of the India Landes now though the India block remains diminished by these developments let us now analyze its game plan uh to beat the BJP and as I said earlier we're going to look at four major strategies of factors that will determine the outcome so after having given you the background let's come to the first major strategy for India will depend on how the Congress performs in this Lo SAA election as it is still the prime Challenger to the BJP now of the 303 seats seats that the BJP won last time the Congress was its primary rival in 190 of them however the Congress managed to win only 15 of them with the remaining 175 seats going to the BJP that gives a strike rate of to the BJP of close to 90 to 95% now in 125 of these seats of the 190 seats that we were talking about the Congress lost by a margin of more than 15 percentage points and therefore and this is really massive uh will require a huge wave in in favor to make uh it take the leap and beat the BJP overall it gets worse the overall uh difference in vot share between the BJP and the Congress in fact was 20% points if you recall the Congress won only 52 seats in 2019 and in 2014 Just 44 seats an alltime low for its tally since Independence so the Congress is contesting uh this time uh only 320 of the 543 seats in the elections the other seats it has conceeded to its allies and at this juncture the Congress party's only hope is to win enough seats in these direct contest with the BJP so as to drop the BJP numbers below the 272 Mark which is needed for a simple majority in the Lok saaba so get the equations right the BJP has 33 seats the uh simple majority is 27 22 so therefore they have 35 seats extra the Congress needs to push that tally down to something like 250 and that means winning over 100 to 120 seats on its own if it is able to push the BJP down to 250 then even though they may not have defeated the BJP it would have severely dented prime minister modi's dominance and credibility and that is possibly its game plan because it's know it knows that the odds are stacked against it and the BJP has decisive advantages but if it can make up and push its stally from the current 52 that it won in 2019 to over 100 and more then the Congress actually begins to make a huge dent into the BJP so to do that the Congress has three major strategies to achieve this goal so let's look at all three of them the first one is that its youthful leader Rahul Gandhi has in the past two years worked towards a coherent National narrative to counter that of the BJP and that is to his credit because uh he has completed two yatras one on foot from north to south uh and the other by bus from east to west so he's crisscross crisscrossed the entire country and moved and mingled with the people listened to them and understood what India is all about and that's what he said in his various post press conferences now Rahul Gandhi's discourses in this in these yatras focused on countering the alleged communal politics of the BJP and the fact that he wanted to protect the Constitutional values apart from providing jobs and working towards uplifting the poor the down Cent and the marginalized across the country also to the credit of Rahul Gandhi and of course the congress party they have kept up uh their Relentless attack on the Modi government for Rising unemployment prize rise and the bjp's alleged Nexus with big corporate groups the part is also pushing uh the plank of a national cast census to wve the other backward classes away from the BJP remember the last time the OBC uh vote went quite decisively towards the BJP and now with the cast sensus The Congress hopes to split that vote and gain some of that apart from that its allies would also benefit now let's come to the second uh counter that the Congress has and this is their second strategy Congress is trying to counter what is called the Modi guarantee which the Prime Minister announced which largely looks at uh what he calls wxed Barat or a developed India by the year 2047 so the Congress in its counter has come up with a set of 25 guarantees of its own to attract the socially backward classes the farmers women workers and youth precisely the kind of uh uh Target group that the Prime Minister was aiming at when he talked of the fact that there were new jatis that he was there and was trying to break break the cast con so the Congress party's promises this time or the guarantees include removing the 50% cap on reservation that is especially because once the cast census comes and if the uh if it is seen that uh uh the backward classes and the extreme backward classes are more than 65 60 to 65% of the population then they would like to lift the Supreme Court uh um kind of order that says that you cannot cross 50% when it comes to reservation in government jobs and institutions then they also the Congress also wants to provide 3 million government post they've announced an apprenticeship with an annual stipend of rupees 1 lakh to every graduate and diplom diploma holder that should enthuse the young and for women there is a rupees 1 lakh a year to to to a woman in every poor family apart from that to asage the farmers they are promising legal status to uh for the minimum support prices to help them and uh this has been a demand that as you've seen even the recent Farmers agitation that there should be a legal sanction for MSP apart from that very importantly they're also promising a national minimum wage of rupees 400 per day and they have many more such promises so it is to be seen whether the Congress guarantee can counter the Modi guarantee the third strategy is to field fresh candidates and of the 230 odd candidates announced so far 66% are fresh faces and while these are very good moves by the Congress let's also be clear that the party scatter uh remains totally demoralized after its defeat in the Hindi Heartland States and desertions of many of its leaders recently it is also seriously hindered by a lack of CER to communicate the strategies and get voters to support it and this you must contrast with the Electoral machine that the BJP has which is finely tuned well oiled and really aggressive and the Congress doesn't have that kind of Might muscle or money power to do the kind of things that the BJP does now let's look at having dealt with the Congress let's look at the second major strategy of the opposition combined and this depends entirely on the India block uh to deliver on the four key Battleground States uh that account for almost 200 120 seats or half the Lo SAA uh and let me give you a list of those four states that are there there these are utar Pradesh which has 80 seats Maharashtra 48 uh West Bengal 42 seats and Bihar 40 seats together they combine and make 220 seats so whoever wins these four states has a great chance to become or or to gain power in the 2024 upcoming general elections that's there but uh here this is where the India Alliance begins to trip up instead of consolidating the forces uh uh you know that it had gained in the past couple of years it has allowed the BJP to regain the advantage and let me take state by state to explain what is really happening in utar Pradesh for instance where the opposition party parties won only 16 of the states 80 seats in the 2019 the BJP is not satisfied with just getting 64 seats it has systematically diminished the influence of the samajwadi party led by AK akilesh yadav if you Rec recall akilesh had fashioned of rainbow alliance against uh uh the BJP uh and its Partners in the assembly elections in 2022 and surprised them with the kind of response he was getting but since then the BJP has one over two of the the samajwadi party's key allies that that the that were with him in 2022 and so uh akiles hasn't kept quiet to counter the bjp's consolidation awards from uh non yadav OBC groups and DS the samajwadi party and AES has been trying to create what is called a social Coalition of PDA uh which is PDA which is an Hindi acronym for backward classes scheduled cast and minorities so he's taking the entire spectrum that is there not restricting himself just to the yadavs where he anyway enjoys tremendous support but the uh in some senses uh the fact that the bahujan samaj party headed by mayavati uh has decided to go on its own has quered the pitch for India and particularly akilesh yadav and therefore it Still Remains an uple task for the SP uh the acces and his allies to grab a substantial number of seats from the BJP in India's electorally most important state now let's take turn to the second state Maharashtra where uh which has 48 seats like I told you earlier and here the situation remains completely fluid especially after the successful splitting of the Maharashtra vikas aadii or the MVA by the BJP if you recall in 2019 the BJP had combined with the shivsena in the loksabha elections to win 41 out of the 48 seats and then of course the alliance broke up during the Assembly election and Shena went ahead and formed the nation uh formed the MVA with the Nationalist congress party as well as the Congress and ruled for a couple of years almost two three years before the BJP toppled it uh but and therefore the the way the BJP did it was to split the Shiva so this time with both the Shiva and of course recall that the National Congress party was also split when Ajit Paar uh moved to the BJP and became a deputy chief minister just last year so uh what has happened is both the Shiva and the Nationalist congress party or the NCP are split down the middle and right now it is still not clear which faction will get the votes whether it is the udav takre faction of the Shi Sena or the eat shind faction and when it comes to the NCP whether sharat paa will get the votes his his faction will get the words or Ajit Paar for the NCP most experts that I spoke to agree that both udav and sharat Paar may get the sympathy vote and that could Dent the BJP and its allies in its overall tally in Maharashtra and the sympathy WOTE because people have not been uh apparently and this could be uh you know uh these are pollsters that talk about it that they're not very happy about the way the BJP went out went about destroying both the Shiva and the NCP to to regain power in Maharashtra so that is something that the BJP has to contend with and of course counter in the upcoming two months where campaigning will be on so let's turn to the third big Battleground which is Bihar and this again promises to be a really tough fight though the BJP had moved smartly to get nitish Kumar back in its fold uh but the India block combination led by tasv yadav of the rria J D or the rjd seems to be gaining traction again these are early days yet they're still two months to go but there is something that Tas yadav is doing that is making uh waves across in many parts of the state and he's doing it by now looking beyond the rgd's core support base of the myy combin if you recall the myy consists of Muslims who constitute 18% of the of bihar's population and Ys who account for 14% which totals 34% so he starts with an advantage of 3% but the combine of uh the BJP and uh nitish Kumar's jdu is last time won almost close to 55% of the votes so not only does he have to keep these 34% but T yadav has to pull the bjp's vote percentage and the um and the JD's vote percentage down by at least 10 to 12% so that he could cross the 40% Mark and therefore he's reaching out to sizable sections of the extremely backward classes or ebcs and if and this was the vot bank that nitish had cultivated for the jdu uh and the India Alliance May gain in some numbers as we know that the chief Minister's credibility that is nitish Kumar's credibility is on the decline after his frequent flip-flops but we don't know that if it you know in a general election where Prime Ministers to be elected whether this would play a role people might say well we want Prime Minister Modi for the center and if it comes to the state elections next time maybe T Yad will do far better he almost won it last time and it this could give him the push to win it when the assembly elections happen but that's still some time away we are talking of the loksa election now let's come to the other the fourth Battleground state which is West Bengal and here again the India Alliance had a chance because as we know uh Bengal chief minister mam banery is a fiery uh competitor but this time she has decided that her party the trinal Congress would go It Alone in the state even though uh she says she will remain part of the India block she has decided not to have a seat sharing agree agreement or arrangement with the Congress or the left parties now mam Ban's party particularly its leaders face allegations of Mis appropriation of funds and Corruption and of course anti-incumbency but the chief minister remains a significant bulwark against the BJP the 2019 election saw her party that of course uh was not good news for the TMC because it yielded 18 of the 42 seats to the BJP with The Gap uh between the two parties just 3% in terms of votes or the overall vote share just 3% so it is going to be a tough fight for mam banerji to keep the BJP at Bay and try and push those numbers down the 18 seats that had won last time uh and push it down further and some poers believe that the reason why the T didn't want to tie up uh with uh uh the Congress or the left parties because if it did then the anti-incumbency votes that is likely to be there would go to the BJP by keeping the Congress and uh left separately in the frey those votes may go there and the bjp's vote share may not go up and that will give mam banery the chance but of course as I said this is uh early days mam banery did have uh get an advantage in some senses when the BJP implemented or put out the rules of the citizenship Amendment act which uh gave her campaign a big push with the Muslim vote constituting close to 27% of the state of the total share and because of the CAA while it might help certain Hindu communities in uh who have refugees who are in West Bengal and certain border districts the Muslims are likely to consolidate solidly behind mam banerji and therefore we have to now see uh whether this would have a major impact and benefit mam banery even as the fact that she may lose some Hindu votes in those border regions now uh quickly there are also very interesting tie-ups in the IND grouping between the Congress and op party normally Rivals but this time they're contesting Gujarat harana and Delhi and that constitutes 43 seats uh and where the BJP made a near Clean Sweep in 2019 so it remains a very tough fight for the India Alliance particularly the op and Congress of course in Punjab up has decided to go it alone and there again the the state remains very fluid in terms of what would be the outcome so let's then move to the third major strategy in India's game plan and this is to guard its Southern Fortress while expanding the territory over there now Team India is confident of scoring high both in Tamil Nadu which has 39 seats and Kerala which has 20 that is a total of 59 seats that's there and therefore in Tamil Nadu the DMK LED India block he's got a very strong Alliance that is put together looks set to grab a majority of the 39 seats as it did last time despite the campaign Blitz C by Prime Minister Modi uh that his party had Unleashed to beat anti-incumbency the DMK has dropped six sitting MPS so far and chief minister MK Stalin has also launched several welfare schemes to woo women and the youth who were the traditional supporters of his ark rival aiadmk so Stalin is set along with his allies that includes the Congress to once again sweep but of course uh the BJP believes that there has been a lot of momentum that Prime Minister Modi has gathered it has a very vocal president over there anamalai and therefore they think they've they've sort of created the uh the the entire moal or uh the the kind of support that they require to make a serious dent and become the prime Challenger to the uh DMK now let's move to Kerala uh where despite all the bickering the Congress and the left have come together under the India block virtually shutting the door on the BJP in 2019 the Congress had won 15 out of the of the states 20 seats and the left parties the remaining five now the BJP has fielded Union minister of State Rajiv chandraker and he's standing against Congress MP Shashi T in tyuan andur this time and this fight is guaranteed to grab all the attention but the fact remains that the BJP is a marginal player in this Southern State and whoever wins whether it is the UDF or the ldf the numbers will approve to the India Kitty but in Karnataka my home state despite the Congress pulling off a major upset in the assembly polls last year it's going to be a tough fight uh for them to win a substantial number of seats from the BJP remember last time the Congress won just one seat of the 28 seats while the BJP got 26 and the Jad D secular got one seat the BJP now has tied up with the JDS to W sizable Woka vot Bank uh and for the Congress the deputy chief minister DK shivakumar Who belongs to this community remains popular and this may blunt the BJP and JDS combined efforts the BJP has also made moves to win the win over the linges uh the other dominant community in the state remember last time during the assembly elections uh the linges voted quite substantially for uh the Congress and that is one of the reasons why they uh you know went romed home to power in that state now the BJP has tried to neutralize that uh and moreover the other factor that could push the BJP ahead is prime minister modi's popularity and uh this pollster say remains a major factor in the state and and uh especially when it comes to Lo SAA elections because Karnataka is known to choose a local party uh for the state or you know whichever party local leader for the state but when it comes to the center it tends to vote nationally and I've seen that happening uh since 1983 84 when Rajiv Gandhi won the elections with a landslide 444 seats and in Karnataka virtually swept the state but in the next 3 months Ram Krishna heg who resigned as chief minister came back with a full majority showing how mature the Karnataka um voter is and therefore this remains uh still to be seen how it's done how the Congress will count it but what they have done so far and it's very smartly done is they are now relying very heavily on chief minister sar's uh experiment or of what is called a hinda which is a Canada Canada acronym for the social Coalition of the minor minorities backward classes and scheduled cast which constitute 60% of the state's population this was this a hinda combination is the one that also propelled the the the state the Congress to power in the state and uh the Congress uh ktic Congress is also going into this election on the back of the implementation of its five pole guarantees such as free bus rides for women and free supply of 200 units of electricity now if you recall this is where the entire Congress guarantee came and then subsequently the BJP appropriated with its own guarantees and this the fact that they've implemented quite a lot of their guarantees that they've done in the past year and a half that they've been ruling the state this may help the Congress to gain more seats from the BJP this time of course again early days now the neighboring state of telengana which is you know the Congress storm to power there uh when it defeated the Barat rashtra suiti uh in the assembly polls just last year is very interestingly poised if you recall in 2019 the BRS had one nine of its s of the 17 seats in the state the BJP 4 and the Congress 3 K Chandra Shak shakar or kcr the election in telengana has become a direct battle between the Congress and the BJP and the Congress May gain more seats in the bargain in neighboring Andra Pradesh however it's a vastly different picture it has 25 seats a large stage but there the India block lost a potential ally when Chandra Babu naidu's telu party or T TDP chose to tie up with the BJP the Congress has always been a rival of Chief Minister jagun M R's y srcp Congress uh and so its chances the congress's chances remain Slim in the state but it is still making an effort so broadly speaking the three big strategies for the India block that I had outlined are one that the Congress needs to step up to the plate and its act and win more seats where it faces a direct contest with the BJP especially in the 200 odd seats where it it contests with the BJP then the second factor I talked about is that the India block must go substantially in the Battleground states of utar Pradesh Maharashtra West Bengal and Bihar and the third factor is uh for India to hold on to the South by sweeping Tamil Nadu and Kerala and expanding its territory or tally by winning big in Karnataka and Telangana however and here is the big catch on the fourth major strategy of having a leader who could challenge Modi for the prime ministerial post the Indian Alliance comes a complete Cropper now while uh Prime Minister Modi epitomizes decisive leadership and expounds a vision of a vixit Barat the India leaders seem more power hungry uh who are and seemed their aspirants seem more interested in pushing their individual party agendas rather than thinking nationally that is why uh Prime Minister Modi has cleverly turned this into a presidential contest like the ones that we see in the United States seist pradep Gupta of axis mindia the very well-known seist uh told me that uh he believes that without modi's presence the BJP would go down to as much as 182 seats which if you recall that was the highest it achieved during AB wp's period when he was prime minister then so Prime Minister Modi Remains the key to the bjp's success and so for uh and so far let's put it this way Rahul Gandhi has not been a match for Modi when it comes to leadership the gap between Modi and Rahul Gandhi uh the popularity Gap has only widened as the recent India Today mood of the nation poll showed and this is not good news for the Congress Congress president uh and India convenor uh Malik Arjun kge in his interview with India today that I talked about earlier India Today magazine told us that he believes more than leadership it is ideology that would Prevail he believes that the voters would give the India Alliance a majority but by go but if you go by current trends I'm there's still two months to go as I said the Congress and India's best bet is to bring the bjp's numbers down to uh below the 272 Mark to around 232 250 that would deliver a massive psychological blow to Narendra Modi and the BJP but it's early days yet and the scene could shift in the weeks ahead a Black Swan event could happen anything is possible in India's elections and that is why it is such a great celebration of democracy meanwhile for more details you could read the in-depth cover story done by my colleague kashik DEA on the opposition game plan as well as our exclusive interview with Congress president kge which we did jointly I sat with Kosik as well on this interview thank you for being with me in this episode of nothing but the truth I look forward to having you with me next week nothing but the truth

Channel: India Today

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Id: NVBprddJWFs

Length: 32min 46sec (1966 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 06 2024