Top sources in the BJP reveal that just two weeks after the party washing out rival parties in the UP polls party boss Amit Shah had met one of his favourite survey agencies in Mumbai. Mission: Estimate the party’s prospects in the 2019 general elections.
A few days ago, the agency submitted its final report, which can run a fresh dose of elixir through the saffron brigade. It predicts 311 Lok Sabha seats for the BJP alone in 2019. Over all, the survey says, the NDA will bag 367 seats. Though it is a possibility now that Rahul Gandhi will soon be anointed president of the Congress, his party is set to lick the dust, the surveys says, with just 39 seats across the country.
In states like West Bengal too, there is a bumper win ahead, survey suggests, where BJP is slated to snatch 12 out of the 42 seats. Interestingly, the party’s seats may come down from 73 to 59 in UP, but it is poised to open the innings in states where it has been a rank outsider so far, with expected nine seats in Assam, one in Kerala and 32 seats from Bihar. In Karnataka, as many as 21 of the 29 seats may land in its lap. Most strangely, the survey shows that in many seats, Dalits and Muslims are with BJP. So therefore, it is going to be a brighter horizon for the saffron party after 2019, it seems.