00:00The dates for the Lok Sabha elections will be out any day now, and the BJP has set a
00:08very ambitious target for itself. 370 seats for the party and more than 400 for its alliance,
00:15the NDA. The question is, will the BJP realistically be able to achieve this 370 target? Currently,
00:22they have 303 MPs in the Lok Sabha, which means they need to get 67 more seats. And
00:27where are these seats going to come from? If you look at some of the key Hindi heartland
00:31states, whether it is Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana, etc, these are states
00:36where the BJP has actually already maxed out. It's won either all the seats in these states
00:40or all but one, all but two. And therefore, you know, in order to win 370, they would
00:46have to retain their strongholds. It's not going to be easy to do, especially with the
00:50party seeking a third straight term in power. But that is going to be a key challenge. They're
00:54very hopeful about Uttar Pradesh, where they have 62 out of the 80 seats in the Lok Sabha.
00:59They're hoping that with the Ram Temple inauguration, they will cross the 70 mark, maybe even 75
01:05plus there. But Maharashtra is going to be a key state because it sends the second largest
01:09number of MPs into parliament. And this is where things could really go either way. We've
01:14seen the Shiv Sena has split since 2019, when they last fought the elections with the BJP
01:20together. There's a lot of sympathy for Uddhav Thackeray, who is with the opposition faction
01:24with the Congress and Sharad Pawar's NCP. So Maharashtra is going to be very important.
01:28In addition to this, there are about 285 seats where the BJP strike rate in the last election
01:34was about 40%. This is where they will hope to do better and pick up a few seats here
01:38and there, whether it's Telangana, Bengal, Tamil Nadu, etc. But also the party is focusing
01:45on about 133 seats that they lost in 2019, of which many are seats that they came in
01:53second place. So they're hoping that these are seats by targeting them specifically,
01:57they can improve their tally and hope to pick up some seats. In the end, though,
02:01will it add up to 370? Like I said, it's a tough task, but nothing is impossible in politics.
02:07There are lots of variables at play in this election, including the fact that the opposition
02:11is in such disarray. But there are headwinds that the BJP is also encountering, like the
02:15farmer protests. How these issues play out in the next few weeks and months will be key.
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