Nitish Kumar is tirelessly meeting a lot of leaders to stitch some kind of Mahagathbandhan to fight Narendra Modi in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The opposition leaders’ meeting on June 2023 is a step towards this. Today’s politically evolved voter who has tasted the advantages of a full majority government at the centre and the stability that it brings in, will not prefer to again have a Khichdi government in Delhi with multiple leaders with divergent ideologies joining hands due to their personal agendas. However, PM Modi and team cannot be complacent and have to play it really smart as the opposition parties can go to any lengths to grab power, their only unifying thread being ousting Modi and BJP from the centre. Here are three main strategies that the opposition parties together will apply which can pose a challenge to Narendra Modi.
Irresistible Freebies For All
Plenty of the general public love Modi but when additional money is promised to be put in their pockets sometimes ideologies and righteousness go for a toss. Coming to power for a minimum of five years and stopping the Modi-BJP momentum is more important than actually implementing all the promises to the tee after coming to power. We have seen the hidden “conditions apply” cunningly coming out in every promised scheme post-elections. The opposition parties have tasted success with this strategy and now will unanimously agree to apply this across their states irrespective of their economic implications. Modi’s BJP have to be really creative in 2024 to counter this and might have to announce freebies and tax cuts too although Modi has been talking against the “Revdi” culture but not sure if people are latching on to it. This will be the biggest challenge to PM Modi in 2024.
Consolidating Minorities And Fragmenting Hindus
The opposition parties would want to pocket every single minority vote. This is easy for them as the minorities still do not support Modi at large and would be ready to vote en masse to a united opposition. They make it happen on the voting day with a strong turnout. On the other hand, the strategy would be to secure segments of Hindu votes on the basis of caste by stirring up the community feeling amongst them by promising say a special status for a particular community that has been asking for it or demanding for a caste census, so on and so forth. In this regard, Modi has to depend on strong Hindu consolidated support for which he has to come up with narratives that touch upon things that Hindus hold really close to their hearts and will supersede the pull of freebies. The official opening of the Ram temple in Ayodhya will help to some extent but will not be the only pivot for a strong Hindu consolidation behind him. He has already ridden on that wave earlier.
Solo Opposition Candidate Against BJP In Each Seat
If the opposition parties agree, albeit this being the biggest challenge that they have, to put forward one strongest candidate from one party in each Lok Sabha seat with the other parties agreeing to step down, it will pose a very interesting challenge to Modi’s BJP as they will not have the opponent vote-splitting advantage. The candidate that BJP puts across has to be really popular with an excellent people connect to pull this off.
2024 is going to be a very interesting election and a test for the top political Chanakyas of this age, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. They can’t depend on the opposition party’s disunity today as when met with existential crisis some of them might be even ready to make sacrifices however painful they may be with the hope that in the future they can make up for it. BJP has to be extremely creative, have a foolproof game plan, an excellent communication strategy, and have to penetrate deeply into states where they have not been successful earlier like in South India. Let’s wait and watch what Narendra Modi brings out of his bag as he has always done in his long and successful political career.
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