On 13th January (Saturday), just a few months before the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections, senior Congress leader and Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor admitted that PM Modi is currently ahead in the race. He added that the opposition parties can try to bring down the seat tally of the Bhartiya Janata Party. The Congress leader argued that if the numbers can be brought down, BJP’s allies in the NDA might come into their camp.
The Congress leader said, “I still expect that the BJP will emerge as the single-largest party. But I do believe their numbers can be brought down to a level where their potential allies required to form a government may no longer be willing to ally with them and may be willing to ally with us. So we have to give it a try.”
He made these remarks during the ongoing Kerala Literature Festival (KLF) session, ‘India: The Future is Now,’ on Saturday.
Regarding the seat-sharing conundrum in the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, he said India is a diverse country and he is perfectly prepared to live with the situation where they don’t have a “100 percent agreement in 100 percent of the states”.
Tharoor added that he only hopes to have “sufficient agreements” in as many states as possible so that “preventable defeats” can be avoided.
He argued that the opposition parties can come to an agreement that in one state they have one unified candidate against the BJP while another state might have two or three candidates. In which case, he said, “the voter has to choose the person they consider would best represent them”.
He added, “That’s the best thing they can do, and if it so happens, and there is enough divergence of views, maybe the BJP candidate will win. But that’s democracy in our first-past-the-post system.”
Citing examples of neighbouring states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, he explained how the seat-sharing pattern of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc will vary from state to state.
He said, “In Kerala, it is almost impossible to imagine the two major opponents here of the INDIA alliance, namely the CPI(M) and the Congress, ever agreeing on seat-sharing, but right next door in Tamil Nadu, the CPI, CPI(M), Congress and DMK are all allied together and there is no debate, no dispute. They already fought the last election together. They are likely to fight this one too.”
According to the Congress leader, the people of the country should vote for the best person in their constituency as only the people of Varanasi can vote for PM Modi. Notably, PM Modi is currently the Lok Sabha MP from the Varanasi constituency.
He further added, “Everybody else has to vote for the best candidate in their places they think represent them well. And if they want to vote only to send Mr Modi that’s their choice, if they want to vote for somebody who will be an effective legislature and who has views that are congenial to them, that’s also their choice and I think we can do that.”
The 400 personalities including Controversial Historian William Dalrymple, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, American physician-author Abraham Verghese, author Perumal Murugan, and comedian Kanan Gill attended the Kerala Literature Festival, which concluded today on Sunday (14th January).