Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy has expressed confidence his party the Congress will win 14 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Mr Reddy became Chief Minister in December 2023 after the Congress defeated K Chandrashekar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
“Every medicine has an expiry date,” Mr Reddy told reporters in Karnataka’s capital Bengaluru during an informal interaction, adding Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lose the Lok Sabha elections 2024.
The Chief Minister did not tell whether his confidence comes from the party winning the assembly election in the southern state.
The BJP and its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have been against the well-being and development of southern states, the Chief Minister alleged.
“There is no warranty for Modi’s guarantees,” Mr Reddy said.
He dared the Opposition BRS to win even a single seat in the Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP may stand to gain from the votes that the BRS will lose, but the Congress will still be able to take at least 14 seats, Mr Reddy said.
He said the Congress party, unlike the BJP and the RSS that have been discriminating against southern states, has always been inclusive by appointing leaders from these states to key cabinet and party positions, even when the Congress had swept the Hindi heartland.
Though Mr Reddy criticised Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM of allegedly colluding with the BJP to polarise voters during election season, he admitted that in a city as Hyderabad where terror groups have tried to radicalise young Muslims, the presence of a political party as AIMIM helped in containing radicalisation.
Mr Reddy recently campaigned in Kerala too. He said the BJP will likely be restricted to a maximum of 20 among the 130 seats in the southern states. In the northern states, the BJP’s numbers will decrease from what it had got in 2019.
The elections are being held in seven phases. Votes will be counted on June 4.
