‘With NDA We Will Have a Comfortable Majority’: BJP’s Ram Madhav

“If we get 271 seats on our own, we will be very happy,” Madhav said in an interview to Bloomberg.

A screengrab of the Bloomberg interview with BJP’s Ram Madhav.

(Screengrab: Bloomberg)

The Bharatiya Janata Party will need the support of its allies to form a government this time around, said the incumbent party’s national general secretary Ram Madhav, in an interview with Bloomberg.

"If we get 271 seats on our own, we will be very happy," Madhav said in an interview with Bloomberg News’ Editor-in-Chief in New Delhi on Saturday. "With NDA we will have a comfortable majority," he said.

Notably, this estimate of less than half seats in the Lok Sabha is far lower that what other prominent leaders of the BJP have proclaimed.

However, a day after he made the statement, Madhav went back on it while speaking to ANI. He said,

“Based on the ground report that we get from our cadres, the BJP will be able to do as good as it has done in 2014, if not better. And together with NDA we will be having a good majority to run another stable government.”

Losses and Gains

This election, the party expects losses in the North Indian states that it swept in the last election. According to Madhav, it will make up for the losses with new gains in the northeast, as well as in West Bengal and Odisha. He added that the BJP will continue to focus on economic reforms and development and not “populist cash handouts”.

"We have expanded in eastern India very well – if similar effort had been put into south India also, probably we would have been more comfortable," he said, adding, "As politicians, we must remember that what we achieved last time, we may not repeat because of anti-incumbency."

On Pakistan and China

Speaking on the recent declaration of the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the United Nations, Madhav said that it provided Pakistan a chance to prove that it will crack down on home-grown militant groups.

He added that this could lead to a productive meeting between the two prime ministers who are due to attend the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in June 2019, shortly after the elections end.

On why China finally allowed Azhar to be declared a global terrorist, he said, "My understanding is that China has finally calculated the gains and losses of taking a position on Masood Azhar this time around."

According to him PM Modi and China’s Xi Jinping have developed a “very good personal rapport.” But he added that until the question of sovereignty was solved, India would not support China’s contentious Belt and Road Initiative.