Recent TV images suggest that the battle for general elections in 2024 will be fought between the Modi-led BJP and the Gandhi family. But all of this could be a lie. Because the real battle in the future, as the BJP well knows, may lie elsewhere.
Biggest political enemy of Modi
As the 2024 Lok Sabha elections come closer, Narendra Modi has remained India’s first choice for Prime Minister’s post. According to the latest survey conducted by India Today, the Mood of the Nation poll suggests that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is projected to win 284 seats if the elections were held today. Meanwhile, the Congress is projected to win 191 seats.
But who will challenge Modi for the Lok Sabha elections in 2024? Will it be Rahul Gandhi who completed the Bharath Jodo Yatra recently? Frankly speaking, the Gandhi family-led Congress is not the real enemy of the Modi-led BJP; the real enemy of the saffron party is the Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party.
According to the survey, Aam Admi Party chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is the person best suited to lead the Opposition with 24% of votes and could pose a possible threat to Modi. This is followed by West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee at 20%.
| Who is the better leader of the opposition? | Arvind Kejriwal | Mamata Banerjee | Rahul Gandhi | Naveen Patnaik |
| survey data | 24 percent | 20 percent | 13 percent | 5 percent |
Only around 13% said that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi could be the next Prime Minister. The figures of the survey were shocking because even after the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul Gandhi is lagging behind in this race and this raises a lot of questions about this Yatra. In the survey, 37% opined that the protest march had created a good buzz, but would not help to win the elections. Around 29% appear to believe that it is a great exercise for mass connect, while 13 dubbed it a ‘rebranding exercise for Rahul Gandhi’.
Who will be the next PM of India?
Arvind Kejriwal might be the best suited to lead the Opposition, but he is still far away from defeating Modi and his BJP in the 2024 elections. Heading into its tenth year at the helm, the Modi government’s performance has found favor with 67% of respondents.
At an individual level, around 72% of the respondents expressed that they were satisfied with the PM’s performance. Many believe the NDA government’s biggest achievements were its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic (20%), the revocation of Article 370 (14%), and the building of Ram Mandir (12%).
Only 8% of people said that the handling of the pandemic was the NDA government’s biggest failure. According to the survey, 25% believe its biggest failure to be ‘price rise’, while 17% focused on its ‘failure to tackle unemployment’.
According to India Today Network, the Mood of the Nation poll had 35,909 respondents covering all Lok Sabha segments in India. It also made use of over 1 lakh interviews from C-voter’s regular tracker data.
