Four states that will decide the BJP’s fate in 2019, says Sandeep Shastri

Pre-poll surveys suggested that the National Democratic Alliance was ahead in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, but the open question was whether the BJP could win a majority by itself. Political scientist Dr Sandeep Shastri said in an interview that a handful of states would decide that.

The key states

Shastri said a pre-poll survey published a week earlier showed the NDA slightly ahead but the BJP short of the halfway mark. He identified four crucial areas for the party:

• Uttar Pradesh: whether the BJP could repeat the strong performance it delivered there last time.
• Karnataka: whether the party could do better than it did in 2014.
• West Bengal: where the BJP is the second-largest player, and whether its push would take it into double digits and pose a challenge to the TMC.
• Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh: the BJP swept Rajasthan in 2014 and won all but two seats in MP. Shastri expected it to do well again, but asked whether it would match that sweep. He said the Congress would gain some seats and, if it grew stronger during the campaign, the BJP would lose ground.

Tamil Nadu

Shastri said the verdict in Tamil Nadu would clearly favour the DMK-Congress alliance, though he did not expect the AIADMK-BJP alliance to be wiped out. He said the AIADMK was heading downwards and had no successor to Jayalalithaa, while Stalin was carrying forward Karunanidhi’s legacy. In his view, the AIADMK government’s record was not positive, and the BJP had entered the alliance out of necessity rather than choice.

What happened next

The BJP won 303 of 543 seats on its own in the 2019 election, counted on 23 May 2019, and Narendra Modi was sworn in for a second term on 30 May 2019.

Originally published on 16 April 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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