Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended his whirlwind Lok Sabha poll campaign with a rally in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur on Thursday, closing out his electioneering the way he began — by focussing on a region where he has invested heavily over the years for the BJP to make a mark outside its strongholds.
Modi notched up a total of 206 public-outreach programmes, including rallies and roadshows, since the Election Commission (EC) announced the poll schedule on March 16.
To pitch for the 400-plus seats mark and strengthen his party chances in 2024, Modi surpassed his nearly-145 public engagements on the stump during the 2019 polls by a big margin. The campaign period this time was 76 days, compared to the 68 days in the polls held five years ago.
When the EC announced the polls, Modi was on a political tour of southern India, covering all five states in the three days between March 15 and March 17. The BJP is eying to boost its fortunes in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh — three states where it won no seat in 2019 — and looking to maintain its strength in Karnataka and increase its tally in Telangana.
At 73, Modi was not only ahead of any other leader in terms of the sheer number of rallies and distance he covered, but continued to be the biggest vote magnet for his party whose comments, panned by critics and lapped up by the BJP’s ardent supporters, set the narratives of the election.
Nearly half of his rallies concentrated only in four states. They are Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Bihar. Together in these four states he participated in 88 rallies. These states contribute 210 Lok Sabha seats, where BJP is struggling hard to keep up its present strength of MPs. The prime minister also gave a total of 80 media interviews, averaging more than one daily since the polls began.
