New Delhi: The INDIA bloc will win at least 295 out of the 543 seats, the opposition grouping claimed on Saturday, days ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha results on June 4.
"We have discussed the polls with our allies. Our assessment is that the alliance will win at least 295 seats and not less than that,” Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said after an INDIA bloc strategy session was held on June 1, the last day of polling.
To showcase its confidence, the Congress also reversed its stand and said that all the INDIA bloc parties will participate in the exit poll debates starting Saturday evening. On May 31, the Congress had announced it would not take part in TV debates on the exit polls which were held merely to boost TRPs of news channels and would join the debates only after the results were out on June 4.
Party insiders said the issue was discussed amongst the alliance parties, who unanimously decided to join the exit poll debates to counter the BJP's charge that the Congress was running away from the discussions as it feared losing the polls.
Like the Congress, the Samajwadi Party too had asked its workers not to believe the exit polls which were largely a propaganda for the BJP, party chief Akhilesh Yadav had told the party workers.
"The numbers we claim have been given to us by the people while there is a government survey also,” said Kharge. According to party insiders, the opposition group was gaining because of its good performance in big states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra, where the alliance was expected to win around 40/80, 30/40 and 35/48 seats respectively.
On its own, the grand old party was adding around 25 seats to its kitty just from Telangana and Karnataka besides the alliance was sweeping Kerala and Tamil Nadu while it was gaining seats in the north, east and west states where the BJP had swept in 2019. These states where the opposition was gaining seats included Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Delhi and Gujarat.
According to party insiders, the NDA was losing as many as 111 seats and would not be able to cross 250 seats, which meant the BJP would be around 215 seats at the maximum.
The BJP leaders have claimed they will win over 370 seats while the ruling alliance would cross 400. While the opposition parties took stock of its performance in the national polls, the grouping parties shared their assessment of the seven phased elections and were confident that the voters had responded positively to the opposition agenda focused on jobs and price rise.
"We are just a few days away from forming a government. That will become clear on June 4. The people have voted for us and the pro-public issues like jobs and price rise that we raised during the campaign," Girish Chodankar, permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) told ETV Bharat.
"We have fought a tough election and will form a government soon. There is no way the BJP could get 400 seats. Out of the 426 seats they contested, over 100 are candidates taken from other parties,” All India Congress Committee (AICC) functionary Abhishek Dutt said.
Accordingly, the alliance parties have asked their booth level workers to guard the strongrooms where all the EVMs have been stored and be vigilant on the counting day June 4 to avoid any unfair practice by the BJP.
The opposition bloc has also sought time with the Election Commission for June 2 to express its concerns over the counting of votes and the role of EVMs.
Besides Kharge, senior Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, KC Venugopal, Tejashwi Yadav of the RJD, Akhilesh Yadav of SP, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, CPI-M’s Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s D Raja, Jharkhand Chief Minister Champai Soren, JMM leader Kalpana Soren, Shiv Sena UBT’s Anil Desai and NCP-SP chief Sharad Pawar attended the meeting.
