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View: PM Modi goes on hyper-drive, Opposition in disarray

PM Modi has attended more than 80 events in the last two months and will be visiting more states in the days to come.

Updated on: Mar 3, 2024, 14:55:24 IST
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on overdrive ahead of the crucial 2024 elections. The prime minister has attended more than 80 events in the last two months and will be visiting more states in the days to come. Not just PM Modi, cabinet ministers of the government are also working relentlessly to ensure that the BJP returns with a thumping majority in the 2024 elections.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah.

There is a term in basketball it's called a full-court press. It's a term in which the top seed does an aggressive play and does not allow the opposition to move even an inch with the ball. All options for the Opposition are closed in the past two months if you see what PM Modi-led BJP is actually doing. PM Modi is holding a plethora of events all over the country. PM Modi has attended over 80 events from January to February-end. He has also addressed around 20 rallies in the past two months, and undertaken some eight roadshows in the past two months with some 30 events outside Delhi.

PM Modi on inauguration spree

The kind of effort that is being put up by the prime minister and his cabinet ministers, particularly Amit Shah, shows that the BJP does not want to even yield an inch to the Opposition. In all the cabinet meetings, in the past two months, the prime minister has told his cabinet ministers there is no space for complacency for the 2024 elections. Ministers such as S Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman, Rajnath Singh, Piyush Goyal, and Amit Shah have adopted a consistent routine, working out of Delhi during weekdays and dedicating their weekends to across different parts of the country. This strategy is a common practice among various ministers who are tasked with garnering support for the BJP in their respective constituencies.

PM Modi may contest from Tamil Nadu as well

Even right now, General VK Singh is sitting in Kanyakumaritrying to look at four constituencies and there is a possibility that the prime minister may even look at one of the seats in Tamil Nadu to contest as a second seat in the 2024 elections. There is inspired leadership, there is a dedicated method for this hyperactivity. There's a strong possibility that the Election Commission may notify the general elections in the first fortnight of March.

Now, what is the PM doing? Rather than sitting in Delhi, PM Modi is in West Bengal. on March 8, he will go to Kaziranga Forest Reserve where he will stay overnight and do a safari there on March 9. he will inaugurate the Sela Tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh. Then he will inaugurate the Dwarka Expressway on March 10. On March 12, PM Modi will visit Pokhran in Rajasthan to attend the Bharat Shakti exercise. This is going to be a tri-service exercise in which indigenous weapon systems and indigenous tactics are going to be put on display. It is going to be a Synergy of all the three armed forces.

Let's look at the big picture. Even before the Opposition started to move, the BJP had already made crucial killer moves in politics – chief minister Nitish Kumar joining the NDA back. the BJP talking to Shiromani Akali Dal; is trying to look at various alliances in Tamil Nadu and in short, making sure that the Opposition's INDIA bloc is absolutely in disarray.

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta

Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.

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