The Prime Minister addressed his maximum election events in Uttar Pradesh (31), as the state sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi lands in Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on the evening of May 30 for a day-and-night meditation session till June 1, he will come full circle since he began his marathon campaign for Lok Sabha election 2024 from Kanyakumari on March 15 this year.
As per calculations done by News18, the Prime Minister did as many as 180 election campaign events, which included his rallies and road shows, this election season. In fact, given the 57 days he actually campaigned, Modi completed these 180 events at a rate of over three events per day. There were three days when the PM chose to do five events in a single day, while on 22 days he did four events daily. The marathon campaign took him to every part of the country.
The PM upped the campaign ante in May when he did 96 events.
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THE BIG FOCUS – 4 STATES, 88 EVENTS
Four states were the big centre-point of PM Modi’s campaign and contributed to over half of all his public events in these two and a half months. The PM addressed his maximum election events in Uttar Pradesh (31), as the state sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha and is the big focus of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The NDA had won 64 seats in UP in 2019 and the BJP is aiming to up its tally here.
The other big focus state was Bihar where the PM did 20 election events, followed by Maharashtra with 19 and West Bengal with 18. The PM almost doubled his election rallies in Maharashtra from 2019, and the state has BJP making new alliances this time with Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP. Meanwhile, Bihar saw JD(U) back in NDA’s fold.
The PM’s big push in West Bengal with 18 election events, including a big road show in Kolkata, was significant as the BJP is looking to up its tally here from the 18 seats it had won the last time. The PM’s road show in Bihar’s Patna was also a significant event this time as it saw huge crowds, and same was the case with PM Modi’s road show in Mumbai.
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35 RALLIES IN SOUTH INDIA
PM Modi put up a big effort in South India this time where the BJP feels it will throw up a surprise by winning a good number of seats. The PM did 35 election events in the five southern states, including 11 events each in Karnataka and Telangana, and seven in Tamil Nadu. The big focus clearly was Telangana where the BJP has smelled anti-incumbency against the BRS, which was voted out of power last year. The BJP feels the fight in Telangana this time is against the Congress.
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THE HEARTLAND
PM Modi did 10 election events in Odisha, given that the BJP is fighting tooth-and-nail here with Naveen Pathak’s BJD. The PM did a big road show in Puri in Odisha. There were 10 election events done by the PM in Madhya Pradesh, too, while Jharkhand got seven events from the PM as the BJP is sensing anger against the JMM government there after Hemant Soren was jailed. Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh saw five and four elections events by the Prime Minister respectively.
The PM’s home state of Gujarat saw the PM do five campaign events while the key state of Punjab got four rallies by the Prime Minister, including his last rally of this election season in Hoshiarpur on May 30. Haryana saw three rallies by PM, while Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand saw two rallies each by the PM. North-Eastern states also saw two rallies by the Prime Minister while the UT of Jammu and Kashmir saw one rally.
