Lok Sabha Elections: Why southern states are important to BJP's Mission 370

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Tamil Nadu on February 27-28.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Tamil Nadu and Kerala on February 27 and 28 during which he will inaugurate a clutch of developmental projects, as the BJP steps up efforts to drum up support for the Lok Sabha elections.

The south, where the BJP’s presence can at best be described sketchy barring Karnataka, is crucial if the party has to achieve its target of 370 seats, analysts say.

Read: 'We scrapped Article 370 then to seek 370 seats now,' PM Modi stresses on an evolved J&K

Modi returns to Tamil Nadu, which has 39 Lok Sabha seats, after a month. As part of his 11-day tour in the run-up to the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on January 22, the PM visited several temples associated with Ramayan.

The Prime Minister also visited Kerala, Lakshadweep, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka to perform religious rituals and inaugurate infrastructure projects.

Poll push

Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh together have 129 seats, with the BJP focusing on 84 of which it won some and did “reasonably well” in 2014. The party won 29 seats, most of them from Karnataka.

The party is likely to field fresh faces for most of the 84 seats, based on the findings of internal surveys. The party seems to be repeating the election strategy it followed successfully to retain Gujarat and Telangana, where it managed to improve its vote share dramatically.

Read more: How will politics in South India pan out for 2024 Lok Sabha polls?

Booth and page committees are being set up in all states, a formula which brought success to the party in northern India.

Connecting with cadre

The BJP has also prepared a list of union ministers, national leaders and party functionaries who will visit the southern states.

They will meet voters and party workers with focus on central schemes. Karnataka, where the BJP was voted out in the 2022 assembly elections, efforts are on to win back voters who favoured the party in the Lok Sabha elections. In 2019, the BJP won 25 of the 28 seats in Karnataka.

In Telangana, the BJP senses bigger opportunity after it improved its vote share even as the Congress scripted a big win.

The BJP is not in power in any state south of the Vindhyas but would want to do better in the Lok Sabha to counter plateauing, if any, of support in the Hindi heartland.