New Delhi : The BJP on Tuesday said the party will welcome the support of anyone in national interest, even as most exit polls and its own predictions give a majority to the NDA led by it.
BJP leader Amit Shah claimed NDA would get anywhere between 290 and 305 seats, including 50 to 55 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh where he was in-charge of the party affairs.
“We fought for 272+ seats and we are getting them. Any party which has even a single MP and wants to support us, we will welcome it in national interest,” he told reporters.
Asked if BJP has established contact with prospective new allies, Shah declined to answer.
Narendra Modi had in recent interviews also said BJP is open to the support of allies even though it will get a majority of its own.
Asked about the future role of senior BJP leaders like L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, Shah said the party’s Parliamentary Board, the supreme decision-making body, would take a call on it. To a question on his own future role if the party comes to power, he said, “I will abide by the party decision.”
He claimed the verdict was in favour of the BJP and gave credit to Modi and the party cadres.
“It will be BJP’s and Narendra Modi’s victory,” he said.
Asked about BJP’s strategy in improving its tally of seats in UP, he said the state was divided into 30 blocks, and a different strategy was adopted for each block.
The BJP leader claimed the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has been decimated by many exit polls, will emerge as the second player in the current Lok Sabha polls.
Shah said several regional parties will lose their authority to rule once the mandate goes against them.
“When they do not get a mandate from the people, they lose the moral authority to rule,” he said, in an apparent reference to Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh.
In Punjab, where ruling Shiromani Akali Dal in alliance with the BJP is facing anti-incumbency, the BJP leader said the earlier exit polls about the state had been proved wrong. He was hopeful of the same happening this time, too.
Asked about the support received by the BJP from RSS volunteers in the Lok Sabha elections, Shah said “not just Sangh, a number of nationalist organisations had openly supported the BJP and the party will largely benefit from that.”
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