4 min readNew DelhiMar 21, 2024 10:01 AM IST
First published on: Mar 20, 2024 at 10:59 AM IST
From holding roadshows, rallies and meetings to inaugurating development projects worth thousands of crores, physically and virtually, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made an unprecedented outreach to the five southern states in recent weeks, keeping in mind his ambitious target of winning 370 seats for the BJP and over 400 seats for the NDA in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Over the past 10 days, PM Modi has visited all five southern states – Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – multiple times. On Tuesday, Modi was at Palakkad in Kerala after which he addressed a rally at Salem in Tamil Nadu.
On Monday, he slammed the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) at a public meeting at Jagtial in Telangana before proceeding to Shivamogga in Karnataka. He ended the day with a roadshow at Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, where he paid homage to the victims of 1998 blasts.
Last week, the PM addressed an NDA rally at Palnadu in Andhra Pradesh and public meetings in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool, Kerala’s Pathanamthitta, and Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari.
The BJP, which is not seen as a formidable force in the South barring Karnataka, had won 29 out of the 129 seats in the five states in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It had won 25 seats out of 28 in Karnataka, four of 17 in Telangana, failing to open its account in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which sends 20 and 39 MPs to the Lok Sabha respectively.
Senior BJP leader and Kerala in-charge Prakash Javadekar has exuded confidence about the party’s prospects this time, saying the BJP will emerge as the single largest party in South India. “(Congress president) Kharge said South India is BJP-mukt. I can say with certainty that after the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP will be the single largest party in the South while the NDA will get the maximum number of seats,” he said.
PM Narendra Modi with Union MoS L Murugan (left) and BJP state chief K Annamalai in Tamil Nadu’s Salem on Tuesday. (PTI)
Meanwhile, aiming to breach the language barrier, the BJP has been using technology like machine learning to translate the PM’s speeches into different southern languages, including the local one.
Before the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) kicked in on March 16, Modi had not only launched several projects in these states but also virtually launched projects in the southern states during his visits to other parts of India.
For instance, Modi virtually flagged off four new Vande Bharat trains for the South – Secunderabad-Visakhapatnam, Mysuru-Chennai, Puri-Visakhapatnam and Kalaburgi-Bengaluru – while launching development projects in Ahmedabad on March 12.
Similarly, he launched highway projects worth around Rs 6,000 crore in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka during an event in Gurugram on March 11, where inaugurated the Haryana section of the Dwarka Expressway.
From Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, Modi virtually laid the foundation stones for airport terminals of Kadapa (Andhra Pradesh), Hubballi and Belagavi (Karnataka) while he dedicated a host of temple and tourist development projects in the southern states during his Viksit Bharat programme in Srinagar.
The PM had also been on a “gifting spree” for the South in February. He inaugurated and dedicated to the nation a slew of projects in the five states including educational institutions, rail projects, highway projects, pipelines, etc.
The Modi government had on February 9 also announced the Bharat Ratna for renowned agricultural scientist late M S Swaminathanm, a native of Tamil Nadu.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a rally in Salem, Tamil Nadu, on Tuesday. (Photo: PTI) 
PM Narendra Modi with Union MoS L Murugan (left) and BJP state chief K Annamalai in Tamil Nadu’s Salem on Tuesday. (PTI)
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