The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance is unlikely to make any significant dent in the prospects of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance securing a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha Elections in 2024, brokerage firm IIFL Securities said in a report released on Thursday.
As per the report, analysing the impact of I.N.D.I.A coming together with the probability of 100 per cent vote transferability, sees a loss of only 17 seats for the NDA from its tally in the 2019 general elections. The report, however, notes that the possibility of complete votes transfer in favour of a common candidate was a “low probability scenario” considering the outcome of the alliance between the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in the last elections.
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“Out of 543 Lok Sabha seats, we see an incremental loss of only 17 seats for the NDA, which means the NDA would still have (over) 300 seats (assuming same vote share as in 2019). Just by the virtue of coming together, the I.N.D.I.A may not be able to de-throne the NDA government, given BJP’s strong hit ratio in the seats contested,” the report states.
The report further notes that the INDIA alliance is still in its formative period and the contours of the alliance still need to be worked out. Citing media reports, IIFL Securities said that the INDIA alliance alliance would have secured 158 seats with a 38 per cent vote share had it contested the elections together in 2019.
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The report, however, observes that while the BJP is placed well for victory in the Lok Sabha elections, Assmebly elections due in states may not be a cakewalk. The report notes that the victory in the Karnataka elections despite the revolving-door theory historically adopted by the state has given the Congress a huge morale boost.
Five states are going to polls before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram. The results of the elections in these states in 2018 were not encouraging for the BJP but it still swept the 2019 general elections six months later.
“We believe BJP might have a mixed bag in terms of the outcome of these elections, with Chhattisgarh expected to be retained by INC, while Rajasthan could see a change with BJP taking over from INC. As such, we do not see the verdict having any bearing on 2024 the General Elections. This is because the electorate tends to vote differently when it comes to the Centre & state elections… Further, in Maharashtra, BJP has joined hands with factions from both Shiv Sena and NCP (the two key regional parties in the state), probably due to inability of it being able to win independently,” the report adds.
The outlook of the brokerage house is largely in line with the findings of the opinion polls so far. The C-Voter & India TV-CNX polls predict NDA to win 306 and 318 Lok Sabha seats respectively, with BJP likely to retain its 2019 vote share of around 37 per cent. The C-Voter survey further found that the popularity of the BJP government and Prime Minster Narendra Modi remains higher than that of Opposition leaders despite the economic condition of the people being weaker than the last elections.