With its allies, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance could win 343 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. In the last election, the NDA had 336 seats while BJP accounted for 282.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday expressed concern over the "needless controversy" created by the Opposition over EVMs at a meeting of NDA leaders, even as the ruling alliance laid out its agenda for the next five years if it is elected to power again.
Leaders like Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, Akali Dal's Prakash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Badal, LJP's Ramvilas Paswan, Apna Dal's Anupriya Patel are expected to attend Amit Shah's gala dinner.
As the country dissects the exit polls predicting that the NDA will come back to power, a look at the pollsters' 2014 prediction shows that they got the trend right, but not the scale of victory for the BJP-led alliance.
The exit poll was conducted in all the seven phases of polling from April 11 to May 19 in 542 parliamentary constituencies of India, among a total voter sample of 1,35,500 respondents. Election in one LS seat, Vellore, has been countermanded.
Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Wednesday said that neither the BJP nor the NDA it leads will be able to form a government after the Lok Sabha elections.
According to the agreement, the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will contest 17 seats each while the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) will contest from six seats.
The previous Congress-led UPA government had lost elections in 2014 when petrol prices had risen sharply in September 2013 to Rs 83.67. This is almost identical to price trend under the current regime when petrol price shot up to an all-time high level of over Rs 90 a liter in Mumbai in September 2018, just a few months ahead of the general election.
A month ahead of the proposed NDA rally, the Congress is scheduled to organise a mega rally in the same location, in which party president Rahul Gandhi will address the gathering.
The Opinion Poll also predicted that BJP's hopes to emulate its 2014 victory will suffer a setback as Bahujan Samajwadi Party led by Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party forged a 'historic alliance' in Uttar Pradesh to take on the Congress and BJP.
The BJP got 1,05,43,025 (29.86%) votes while the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) secured 72,24,893 (20.46%) votes, claiming the second spot.
Narayanasamy said the government in Tamil Nadu was distributing the Pongal gift to all families and “we want to toe the same line without any discrimination between above poverty line and BPL families.”
Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) president Om Prakash Rajbhar, an MLA from Zahoorabad assembly constituency in Ghazipur district and a minister in Yogi Adityanath government, said he would not attend PM's event.
"We small parties, like the Apna Dal(S), want some respect to be shown to us. We, our leaders and workers feel hurt if due importance is not given to us," Ashish Patel told mediapersons in UP's Mirzapur.
An hour-long meeting between top BJP leaders, including its president Amit Shah and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, and LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan and his son Chirag remained inconclusive, sources indicated.
Dealing a blow to Kushwaha, both the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) MLAs-- Sudhanshu Shekhar and Lalan Paswan-- and its lone MLC-Sanjiv Singh Shyam- made a statement to this effect at a joint press conference in Patna.
However, the big difference is that this time the BJP will not be able to cross the half-way mark on its own in the parliament.
Karnataka unit Congress president Dinesh Gundu Rao said Gandhi will talk to the employees of the city-based Hindustan Aeronautics Limited about the controversial deal and also address a rally here.
Lok Sabha elections 2019: "We will win all 40 seats in the state by virtue of our ideology and organizational depth. We must drive out corrupt parties which believe in dynasty rule. The Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) is just a hypothesis and a myth. It is a grouping of opportunistic dynasts", a BJP release quoted Yadav as saying.
Chidambaram also thanked Principal Economic Adviser Sanjeev Sanyal for endorsing his view that the Q1 GDP growth of 8.2 per cent is largely due to the low base effect (5.6).
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