BJP will have a tough time in 2024, predicts Tharoor

The BJP will face a “very tough time” in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections if the divided opposition puts up just one candidate against the ruling party in each constituency, Congress MP Shahsi Tharoor said on Friday.

Tharoor told PTI that it would not be easy for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to replicate 2019 when it swept or almost swept multiple states.

Asked if the Congress has to be the fulcrum of any opposition alliance, the former Union minister said: “De facto it (Congress) is the only party other than the BJP with a national presence.

“Arguably we have a stronger national presence in some parts of India than the BJP (including Kerala and Tamil Nadu).”

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Congress footprint

The Congress, he added, with a national footprint, a historic legacy and a presence pretty much everywhere and so it has to figure in any calculations of an opposition front or government in due course, Tharoor said.

“We have seen from the last two elections which the BJP won with 31 and 37 per cent votes respectively is that a divided opposition plays into the BJP’s hands.”

The MP said the opposition unity could be in various forms such as a pre-poll alliance or choosing seats wisely so that as far as possible, the strongest candidate gets a clear run against the BJP rival.

“All I can say is that if the opposition by and large coalesces around one candidate in every constituency, I think the BJP is going to face a very tough time in 2024,” Tharoor asserted.

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Changes since 2019

He argued that there have been very significant material changes in the country since 2019 and cited the example of Bihar where the BJP’s former ally JD(U) has joined hands with the opposition.

“Similarly, there are other states in which the BJP either had a clean sweep or won all but one seat in the state. I don’t think that pattern will replicate itself so easily in 2024.”

There is inevitably some anti-incumbency in the country, and the BJP may well be ruing in 2024 that it succeeded so much in 2019 that there were practically no gains left for it to make in the country, Tharoor said.

Bharat Jodo Yatra

“It is going to be an exciting election. I do not agree with those who have written off the opposition prospects in 2024.”

“We have seen that the public reaction to the Bharat Jodo Yatra, especially the culmination in Kashmir, was far greater than anybody, whether our critics or our admirers, had anticipated,” he said.

(With Agency inputs)