New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday cited the feedback it received to assert that it is poised for a big jump in its number of Lok Sabha seats from states where it was not considered relatively strong and will sweep in other regions.
Soon after the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections in 102 seats spread across 21 states and Union Territories were over, BJP spokesperson and MP Sudhanshu Trivedi asserted that people have rallied around Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a strong and decisive government.
He also took a swipe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, mocking him as the “self-declared” leader of the opposition INDIA bloc.
Trivedi said Gandhi has still not been able to gather the courage to file his nomination from Amethi, the Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh which had been a Gandhi family pocket borough before he lost to the BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019.
Some reports have said that the former Congress president may contest from Amethi but no official announcement has been made yet.
The BJP spokesperson said the ruling party will win more seats than the last time and with bigger margins.
In an apparent reference to Tamil Nadu, where polls were held in all 39 seats on Friday, he said it will make a big jump in states where it has been relatively not strong.
The Election Commission on Friday said an aggregate 60.03 per cent voter turnout was recorded in phase one of the Lok Sabha polls.
Polling took place in 102 constituencies across 21 states and Union Territories in the first of the seven-phase elections.
Leaders of the ruling party have time and again exuded confidence that the NDA
would win more than 400 seats in the Lok Sabha elections with the BJP alone winning 370 seats.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls the BJP won 303 seats.